Call for papers
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FSMNLP 2005
Workshop on Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing
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University of Helsinki, Finland
1 - 2 September 2005
http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/events/FSMNLP2005
Papers due: 25th April 2005
FSMNLP 2005 will be a forum for researchers working on applications of
finite state methods (FSM) in natural language processing (NLP) or on
the theoretical and implementation aspects of such finite-state
methods that are relevant to NLP. The aim of the workshop is to bring
together members of the academic, research, and industrial community
working on finite-state based models in language technology,
computational linguistics, linguistics and cognitive science or on
related methods in fields such as computer science and mathematics.
TOPICS:
We invite novel high-quality papers that are related to the themes
including but not limited to:
1. NLP applications and linguistic aspects of finite-state methods
The topic includes but is not restricted to:
- speech, sign language, phonology, hyphenation, prosody
- scripts, text normalization, segmentation, tokenization,
indexing
- morphology, stemming, lemmatisation, information retrieval,
spelling correction
- syntax, POS tagging, partial parsing, disambiguation,
information extraction
- machine translation, translation memories, glossing, dialect
adaptation
- annotated corpora and treebanks, semi-automatic annotation,
error mining, searching
2. Finite-state models of language
With this more focused topic (inside 1) we invite papers on
aspects that motivate sufficiency of finite-state methods or their
subsets for capturing various requirements of natural language
processing.
The topic includes but is not restricted to:
- performance, linguistic applicability, finite-state hypotheses
- Zipf's law and coverage, model checking against finite corpora
- regular approximations under parameterized complexity,
limitations and definitions of relevant complexities such as
ambiguity, recursion, crossings, rule applications, constraint
violations, reduplication, exponents, discontinuity, path-width,
and induction depth
- similarity inferences, dissimilation, segmental length,
counter-freeness, asynchronous machines
- garden-path sentences, deterministic parsing, expected parses,
Markov chains
- incremental parsing, uncertainty, reliability/variance in
stochastic parsing, linear sequential machines
3. Practices for building lexical transducers for the world's
languages.
The topic accounts for usability of finite-state methods in NLP.
It includes but is not restricted to:
- required user training and consultation, learning curve of
non-specialists
- questionnaires, discovery methods, adaptive computer-aided
glossing and interlinearization
- example-based grammars, semi-automatic learning, user-driven
learning (see topic 6 too)
- low literacy level and restricted availability of training data,
writing systems/phonology under development, new non-Roman scripts
- linguist's workbenches, stealth-to-wealth parser development
- endangered languages, experiences of using existing tools for
computational morphology and phonology
4. Specification and implementation of sets, relations and
multiplicities in NLP using finite automata
The topic includes but is not restricted to:
- regular rule formalisms, grammar systems, expressions,
operations, closure properties, complexities
- algorithms for compilation, approximation, manipulation,
optimization, and lazy evaluation of finite machines
- finite string and tree automata, transducers, morphisms and
bimorphisms
- weights, registers, multiple tapes, alphabets, state covers and
partitions, representations
- locality, constraint propagation, star-free languages, data vs.
query complexity
- logical specification, MSO(SLR,matches), FO(Str,<), LTL,
generalized restriction, local grammars
5. Constraint-based grammars and k-ary regular relations
With this more focused topic (inside 4) we invite researchers from
related fields (computational linguists, mathematicians and
computer scientists) into discussion that is motivated by
constraint-based, declarative approaches to morphology/phonology
and computational problems related to them. For example, regular
relations in general are not closed under intersection, but
restricted use of intersection or relations have proven useful in
computational phonology and morphology, and their
implementations such as KIMMO, PC-KIMMO, TWOLC, SEMHE,
AMAR, WFSC, etc. In the future, new useful approaches and
implementations may come up. The approaches may also propagate to
other application areas in natural language processing, including
finite-state syntax and query languages for parallel annotations
in linguistic corpora.
The topic includes but is not restricted to:
- multi-tape automata, same-length relations and partition-based
morphology, Semitic morphology
- autosegmental phonology, shuffle, trajectories,
synchronization, segmental anchoring, alignment constraints,
syllable structure, partial-order reductions
- problems related to auto-intersection of multi-tape automata
e.g. marked Post Correspondence Problem
- varieties of regular languages and relations, descriptive
complexity of finite-state based grammars
- automaton-based approaches to declarative constraint grammars,
constraints in optimality theory
- parallel corpus annotations, register automata, acyclic
timed automata
6. Machine learning of finite-state models of natural language
This topic includes but is not restricted to:
- learning regular rule systems, learning topologies of finite
automata and transducers
- parameter estimation and smoothing, lexical openness
- computer-driven grammar writing, user-driven grammar learning,
discovery procedures
- data scarcity, realistic variations of Gold's model,
learnability and cognitive science
- incompletely specified finite-state networks
- model-theoretic grammars, gradient well/ill-formedness
7. Finite-state manipulation software (with relevance to the above
themes)
This topic includes but is not restricted to
- regular expression pre-compilers such as regexopt,
xfst2fsa, standards and interfaces for finite-state based
software components, conversion tools
- tools such as LEXC, Lextools, Intex, XFST,
FSM, GRM, WFSC, FIRE Engine, FADD,
FSA/UTR, SRILM, FIRE Station and Grail
- free software such as FSA Utilities, Unitex,
OpenFIRE, Vaucanson, SFST, PCKIMMO, MONA,
Hopskip, ASTL, UCFSM, HaLeX, SML, and WFST
- results obtainable with such exploration tools as automata,
Autographe, Amore, and TESTAS
- visualization tools such as Graphviz and Vaucanson-G
- language-specific resources and descriptions, freely available
benchmarking resources
The descriptions of the topics above are not meant to be complete. The
submitted papers or abstracts may fall in several categories.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Paper/poster submissions due: 25th April
Notifications sent out: 25th May
Deadline for early registration: 10th June
Abstracts for software demos due: 10th June
Camera-ready papers due: 20th June
SUBMISSIONS:
We expect three kinds of submissions:
1. full papers,
2. interactive presentations (posters) and
3. software demos.
Please visit the workshop home page for further details.
PROCEEDINGS:
The final versions of papers and abstracts will be published both
online and/or on CD-ROM (with an official ISBN number), as well as a
technical report if there are many participants who would like to have
printed proceedings.
RESERVING A JOURNAL ISSUE:
We are planning to reserve a journal issue so that selected papers
could be invited for submission for a special issue of an
international journal. After earlier FSMNLP and similar workshops, the
following special issues have been published:
* Natural Language Engineering 2(4), 1996 based on Extended
Finite State Models of Language 1996
* Natural Language Engineering, 9(1), 2003 based on FSMNLP 2001
* Machine Translation 18(3), 2003 based on FSMNLP 2003
Currently, we cannot say whether a similar special issue will be
realized this time or not.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Steven Bird (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Francisco Casacuberta (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Jean-Marc Champarnaud (Université de Rouen, France)
Jan Daciuk (Gdansk University of Technology, Poland)
Jason Eisner (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
Tero Harju (University of Turku, Finland)
Arvi Hurskainen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Juhani Karhumäki (University of Turku, Finland, co-chair)
Lauri Karttunen (PARC and Stanford University, USA, co-chair)
André Kempe (Xerox Research Centre Europe, France)
George Anton Kiraz (Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, USA)
Andras Kornai (Budapest Institute of Technology, Hungary)
Terence Langendoen (University of Arizona, USA)
Eric Laporte (Université de Marne-la-Vallée, France)
Mike Maxwell (Linguistic Data Consortium, USA)
Mark-Jan Nederhof (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
Gertjan van Noord (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
Kemal Oflazer (Sabanci University, Turkey)
James Rogers (Earlham College, USA)
Giorgio Satta (University of Padua, Italy)
Jean-Eric Pin (CNRS/University Paris 7, France)
Giorgio Satta (University of Padua, Italy)
Jacques Sakarovitch (CNRS/ENST, France)
Richard Sproat (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Nathan Vaillette (University of Tübingen, Germany)
Atro Voutilainen (Connexor, Finland)
Bruce W. Watson (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
Shuly Wintner (University of Haifa, Israel)
Sheng Yu (University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Lynette van Zijl (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)
ORGANIZATION:
The workshop will take place in the University of Helsinki. The
organizing institution is the Department of General Linguistics in
the University of Helsinki. The local committee is headed by Anssi
Yli-Jyrä at CSC -- Scientific Computing Ltd.
The workshop is a follow-up for some earlier workshops, but also
continues their dynamic, changing tradition. These workshops and
courses are under different names and time intervals:
* 1996: course on Finite-State Techniques in NLP (Groningen)
* 1996: ECAI workshop: Extended Finite-State Models of Language
(Budapest)
* 1998: Finite-State Methods in Natural Language Processing
(Ankara)
* 2001: ESSLLI workshop: Finite-State Methods in Natural
Language Processing (Helsinki)
* 2003: EACL workshop: Finite-State Methods in Natural Language
Processing (Budapest)
* 2005: Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing
(Helsinki)
FSMNLP workshops have traditionally had tutorial lessons and/or
invited speakers.
CO-LOCATED EVENTS:
There are initial thoughts about a national, one-day workshop on
Automata, Words and Languages (AWL) that would take place in Helsinki
just before FSMNLP. An AWL workshop was arranged in 2002 at the
University of Turku.
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