TAL special issue on sign language modelling and processing

[Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa]

Val and everybody,

   There will be a special issue of a French journal (Traitement 
Automatique des Langues) that will publish academic research papers on 
sign language modelling and processing.

   Below is the call for papers, in case somebody becomes interested in 
submitting his/her research results.

   All the best,

   Antônio Carlos

---

SIGN LANGUAGE MODELLING AND PROCESSING
TAL SPECIAL ISSUE
GUEST EDITORS: Christian CUXAC and Patrice DALLE

Sign language studies are now emerging from their specific and
confidential territory to meet up with ongoing research on natural
language both from a linguistic and computer science viewpoints. The
number of specific colloquia is quickly increasing, and research on
sign language being presented in non specialised colloquia. The study
of sign language is providing insight on language phenomena and is
therefore of interest to more than specialised linguists. The fields
of computer vision and avatar synthesis are now entering research on
sign languages. Will Natural Language Processing also participate?

In France, the status of Sign language has changed, with the law voted
in February 2005, and the right to use French Sign Language (LSF) in
all aspects of the life of a deaf person. Its teaching is now allowed
in education and there exist teaching programs inspired from the ones
for European languages.  So, there is a need for knowledge to
describe, present and teach sign language.

With Internet, tools for Natural Language Processing are now part of
the life and development of a language. Sign languages should be
usable on Internet to communicate, to get informed, and even for sign
language learning. This requires robust and efficient applications
respectful of the specificities of sign languages. These requirements
will only be met if these applications rely on elaborate models and
precise formalization of sign languages.

 From a linguistic point of view, formalization and computerization of
sign languages are especially appealing : the study of a different
medium should highlight the universal aspects of human languages but
also the aspects specific to sign languages, by for instance providing
corpora, and more or less automatic annotation and analysis tools.

Submission to this special issue should address the automated
processing of sign languages as well as formal models which lead to
processing tools.

NON EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF TOPICS
-       semantics and pragmatics of sign languages;
-       iconicity and semiotics of sign languages : models and
formalisation of iconicity;
-       lexicon, morphology and syntax of sign languages;
-       sign language phonology;
-       representation of sign languages;
-       sign language analysis and generation;
-       models for sign languages issued from logical, symbolic or
statistical methods;
-       computer aided translation between sign languages and spoken
languages;
-       human computer interaction in sign language;
-       tools and resources for sign languages;
-       automated analysis and indexing of video corpora of sign
languages;
-       image processing and modelling for sign languages;
-       modelling and generation of avatars for sign language synthesis.


THE JOURNAL

(see http://www.atala.org/)

The journal TAL (Traitement Automatique des Langues) is an
international journal published since 1960 by ATALA (Association pour
le Traitement Automatique des Langues) with the support of the
CNRS. It is now becoming available in electronic form, with print on
demand. The reading and selection process remain unchanged.

LANGUAGE

Manuscripts may be submitted in English or French. French-speaking
authors are requested to submit in French.

IMPORTANT DATES

(Authors wishing to submit a paper are invited to send an email 
including the title and authors  of their proposal to dalle at irit.fr and 
retore at labri.fr as soon as possible and not lalter than June 15th )

June 25th 2007 Deadline for submission
December 19th 2007 Notification to authors
October 19th 2007 Deadline for submission of revised version

PAPER SUBMISSION

Contributions (25 pages maximum, PDF format) will be sent by e-mail to
both editors at the address below:
dalle at irit.fr
Style sheets are available for download at
http://tal.e-revues.com/appel.jsp

GUEST EDITORS

Christian Cuxac (Université Paris 8)
Patrice Dalle (IRIT, Université Toulouse 3)

SPECIFIC EDITORIAL BOARD

Jenny Benois-Pineau (Université de Bordeaux)
Annelies Braffort (CNRS, LIMSI, Orsay)
Georgette Dal (Université de Lille III)
Antonio Da Rocha Costa (Universidade Católica de Pelotas, Brasil)
Brigitte Garcia (Université Paris 8)
Sylvie Gibet (Université de Bretagne Sud, Vannes)
Agnès Millet (Université Grenoble 3)
Carol Neidle (University of Boston, USA)
Anne-Marie Parisot (UQAM, Montréal, Canada)
Elena Pizzuto (CNR, ISTC, Roma, Italy)
Annie Risler (Université de Lille III)
Richard Sabria (DYALANG, Université de Rouen)
Marie-Anne Sallandre (Université Paris 8)
Alessandro Zucchi (Universtià degli Studi di Milano, Italy)



-- 
Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa
Escola de Informática
Coord. Mestrado em Ciência da Computação
Programa de Pós-graduação em Informática
Universidade Católica de Pelotas
http://ppginf.ucpel.tche.br