[Corpora-List] CFP: Workshop on Semantic Content Acquisition and Representation

From: Magnus Sahlgren (mange@sics.se)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2007 - 10:04:15 MET

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    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                             FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
         Workshop on Semantic Content Acquisition and Representation
                                  (SCAR 2007)
                      http://www.sics.se/~mange/scar2007/
                        Pre-conference workshop NODALIDA
                       Thursday, May 24, Tartu, Estonia
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Text (and language in general) has ABOUTNESS; it has meaning, or
    semantic content. We as (computational) linguists are highly adept at
    dissecting text on a number of different levels: we can perform
    grammatical analysis of the words in the text, we can detect animacy
    and salience, we can do syntactic analysis and build parse trees of
    partial and whole sentences, and we can even identify and track topics
    throughout the text. However, we are comparatively inept when it comes
    to identifying the semantic content, or meaning, of the text. Or, to
    put matters in more concise terms, even though there are theories and
    methods that claim to accomplish this, there is a striking lack of
    consensus regarding both acquisition, representation, and practical
    utility of semantic content.

    The aim of this workshop is not only to provide a forum for
    researchers to present and discuss theories and methods for semantic
    content acquisition and representation. The aim is also to discuss a
    common evaluation methodology whereby different approaches can be
    adequately compared. As a first step in this direction, participants
    will be encouraged to apply their methods, or relate their theories,
    to a specific test corpus that will be available in several of the
    Nordic languages and English. Participants will be expected to
    demonstrate what kind of results their methods can yield. In this
    workshop, the relevance of an approach to meaning is judged only by
    what it can tell us about real language data. The overall purpose of
    this workshop is thus to put theories and models into action.

    Questions of interest include:

    * Is there a place in linguistic theory for a situation- and
      speaker-independent semantic model beyond syntactic models?

    * What are the borders, if any, between morphosyntax, lexicon and
      pragmatics on the one hand and semantic models on the other?

    * Are explicit semantic models necessary, useful or desirable? (Or
      should they be incidental to morphosyntactic and lexical analysis on
      the one hand and pragmatic discourse analysis on the other?)

    We encourage submissions in the following areas:

    * Discussions of foundational theoretical issues concerning meaning
      and representation in general.

    * Methods for supervised, unsupervised and weakly supervised
      acquisition (machine learning, statistical, example- or rule-based,
      hybrid etc.) of semantic content.

    * Representational schemes for semantic content (wordnets, vectorial,
      logic etc.).

    * Evaluation of semantic content acquisition methods, and semantic
      content representations (test collections, evaluation metrics etc.).

    * Applications of semantic content representations (information
      retrieval, dialogue systems, tools for language learning etc.).

    Submission procedure:

    Online submission is now open at http://www.easychair.org/SCAR2007/.
    Submissions should not exceed 8 pages, and should use the ACL style
    files available at http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/acl2007/styles/. Since
    reviewing will be blind, papers should not include the authors' names
    and affiliations, and self-references should be avoided. Proceedings
    will be published electronically.

    Important dates:

    Submission deadline: March 26
    Notification of acceptance: April 26
    Final papers due: May 7
    Workshop: May 24

    Location:

    NODALIDA 2007, Tartu, Estonia.

    Organizers:

    Magnus Sahlgren, SICS (mange@sics.se)
    Ola Knutsson, KTH (knutsson@csc.kth.se)

    Program Committee:

    Peter Bruza, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
    Gregory Grefenstette, CEA LIST, France
    Jussi Karlgren, SICS, Sweden
    Alessandro Lenci, University of Pisa, Italy
    Hinrich Schütze, University of Stuttgart, Germany
    Fabrizio Sebastiani, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy
    Dominic Widdows, MAYA Design, USA



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