Subject: computational linguistics / general and thematic sessions

acl ' 99 call for papers 37th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics 20 - - 26 june , 1999 university of maryland [ you may find it easier to read this information on the web at http : / / www . mri . mq . edu . au / conf / acl99 ] 1 . paper sessions 1 . 1 topics of interest in a break with tradition , at this year 's acl conference we are experimenting with a new format . the technical sessions of the conference will be of two kinds . there will be general sessions of the kind that have formed the conference programme in the past ; however , there will also be a number of special thematic sessions , somewhat like a special issue of a journal , organised around themes proposed by members of the computational linguistics community . our aim is to incorporate some of the intensity and excitement of the traditional post-conference workshops , without replacing those workshops . the conference structure will mean that the thematic sessions will run as parallel sessions , resulting in smaller and more focussed audiences . when you submit a paper to the conference , you will need to consider whether you want to present the paper in the general sessions or in one of the thematic sessions , which are listed below . for the general sessions , papers are invited on substantial , original , and unpublished research on all aspects of computational linguistics , including , but not limited to : pragmatics , discourse , semantics , syntax and the lexicon ; phonetics , phonology and morphology ; interpreting and generating spoken and written language ; linguistic , mathematical and psychological models of language ; language-oriented information retrieval and information extraction ; corpus-based language modeling ; machine translation and translation aids ; natural language interfaces and dialogue systems ; approaches to coordinating the linguistic with other modalities in multi-media systems ; message and narrative understanding systems . papers submitted to the thematic sessions are more narrowly targeted at specific topics . the complete list of thematic sessions is as follows ; further information about each can be found at the indicated url . d1 : dialogue management in interactive spoken dialogue systems chairs : diane litman and marilyn walker motivation : the advent of real-time interactive spoken dialogue systems poses special challenges for dialogue management . topics : evaluation , dialogue strategies , repair , system integration , learning / optimizing system behavior , corpus analysis , robust processing , and the requirements dialogue places on generation , speech recognition and synthesis . http : / / www . research . att . com / ~ diane / acl99 - theme . html d2 : discourse tagging : uses , results and applications chairs : marilyn walker , julia hirschberg and owen rambow motivation : empirical approaches to discourse processing often rely on tagging texts or dialogues with discourse tags from a wide range of tag sets . topics : discourse tagging for training or testing models of discourse structure , reference , translation , speech acts , topic identification , and speech recognition . http : / / www . research . att . com / ~ walker / dtag-acl 99 . html d3 : corpus - based approaches to discourse and dialogue chair : nancy ide this theme treats corpus-based work on any aspect of discourse and dialogue analysis , including co-reference , segmentation , discourse structure , parsing , generation , etc . , especially in the light of relevance to practical applications . http : / / www . cs . vassar . edu / ~ ide / calls / acl99 - discourse . html d4 : lexicon and discourse : connections through structure and semantics chairs : laurence danlos , alistair knott , and bonnie webber motivation : with the lexicon becoming a central resource for computing properties of the sentence , one may consider similar gains for computing properties of discourse . topics : lexical semantics of discourse connectives and focus particles , discourse and lexical interpretation , lexicalized grammars for discourse . http : / / www . cogsci . ed . ac . uk / ~ alik / acltheme . html i1 : nlp techniques for cross - language information retrieval chair : douglas oard motivation : systems that use queries or examples in one natural language to find text or speech in another are becoming increasingly important . topics : nlp techniques for query translation , cognate matching and interlingual matching techniques , cross-language gisting using summarization or gloss translation . http : / / www . clis . umd . edu / conferences / acl99clir / i2 : exploring the limits of shallow parsing chair : gregory grefenstette shallow parsing techniques provide a partial analysis of the syntactic structures . theme covers research into : quantifying identifiable linguistic phenomena in a corpus ; evaluating accuracy of dependency relations extracted by shallow parsers ; approximation of full parsing with shallow parsers . http : / / www . xrce . xerox . com / research / mltt / dmhead / acl99 i3 : information extraction from spoken language data chairs : lynette hirschman and david palmer motivation : identifying relevant syntactic and semantic items ( such as names , dates , and events ) in speech data requires robust processing of misspellings , transcription errors , tokenization ambiguities and disfluencies . topics : algorithms , architectures , and evaluation techniques for noisy data information extraction vhttp : / / raven . bu . edu / conferences / acl-ie99 / i4 : natural language processing for interactive information retrieval chair : hinrich sch | tze this theme solicits papers that use nlp to enable better interactive information retrieval . examples include query analysis , disambiguation , and classification of queries into semantic hierarchies , but we are especially interested in novel ideas . ftp : / / parcftp . xerox . com / pub / qca / schuetze / acl99 . html i5 : robust sentence - level interpretation chairs : carolyn penstein rose and alon lavie in contrast to information extraction and shallow parsing techniques , in this session we focus on robust approaches to full sentence interpretation , with an emphasis on empirical evaluation . topics : pre-parsing repair , robust parsing , post-parsing repair , and user interaction . http : / / www . pitt . edu / ~ rosecp / topic . html i6 : topic detection chairs : james allan and bruce croft we examine discovering structure and themes across many texts : finding the topics that underlie the text . it includes summarization , theme extraction , tdt detection , concept extraction , high-quality clustering , and related evaluations . http : / / ciir . cs . umass . edu / acl99 l1 : parsing of inflective , agglutinative and / or free word order languages chair : jan hajic parsing of languages displaying non-analytical , non-fixed word order behavior to a large extent poses specific problems which are expected to be addressed . all aspects of dealing with such problems are welcome , including morphological , syntactic and semantic processing . http : / / ufal . ms . mff . cuni . cz l2 : mt / nlp for languages of low diffusion chairs : doug jones and boyan onyshkevych motivation : adequate large-scale mt or other nlp systems do not exist for the bulk of the world 's languages , nor are there significant on-line resources for them . topics : how to build large-scale mt / nlp systems and resources for these other languages ; how to leverage minimal resources ( including native language expertise ) l3 : word segmentation and lexical acquisition in asian languages chair : masaaki nagata motivation : exchange ideas and experiences on word segmentation among asian researchers as well as between asian and western researchers . topics : theories and applications of tokenization and dictionary construction techniques for languages that do not put space between words , such as chinese , japanese , and thai . http : / / www . milab . is . tsukuba . ac . jp / word-seg - acl99 m1 : automated analysis and evaluation of free text chairs : jill burstein and claudia leacock motivation : to bring together researchers who are interested in the evaluation of essays and other free text for purposes of assessment and instruction . topics : identification and analysis of textual features ; generation of feedback to authors ; evaluation of system results . http : / / www . ets . org / research / acl99 . html m2 : the use of large - coverage lexical resources for tagging and parsing chair : max silberztein motivation : to present dictionary-based projects and results whose starting point is either machine readable dictionaries , raw lists or large corpora topics : large-coverage lexical resources , construction of dictionaries , corpus processing http : / / www . ladl . jussieu . fr / confs / acl99 / acl99 . html m3 : prosody modelling in nlg / speech generation chairs : elke teich and sandra williams motivation : integrating natural language generation and speech synthesis . topics : reconciling syntactic , semantic and prosodic representations ; determination of intonation focus and contour according to context ; adaptations of nlg architectures for speech generation . http : / / www . mri . mq . edu . au / ~ swilliam / acl99theme / m4 : design , implementation , and uses of controlled languages chairs : tony hartley and cecile paris motivation : controlled languages are increasingly used to enhance readability , facilitate automatic processing of documents , and guide input to generation systems . important concerns are the development and enforcement of controlled languages . topics : authoring environments , design principles , corpus analysis , controlled language applications . http : / / www . itri . brighton . ac . uk / events / acl99 / clang . html m5 : computational psycholinguistics chair : philip resnik motivation : discussing empirical and theoretical studies on psychologically motivated computational models of human language processes , as opposed to nlp applications , emphasizing non-introspective data , statistical methods , and the relationship between linguistic competence and performance . topics : computational studies involving processes such as lexical access , parsing , interpretation , generation , disambiguation , acquisition . http : / / umiacs . umd . edu / ~ resnik / acl99 _ cpl / before submitting a paper to a thematic session , you should read the information about each of these themes provided on the separate web pages . during the conference itself , some sessions may be video-taped . presenters will be alerted to this possibility and will be able to request that the cameras are turned off during their presentations . 1 . 2 requirements requirements are the same regardless of whether your are submitting a paper to the general sessions or the thematic sessions ; see the separate call for student papers for information on requirements for papers submitted to the student sessions . papers should describe original work ; they should emphasize completed work rather than intended work and they should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results . wherever appropriate , concrete evaluation results should be included . a paper accepted for presentation at the acl meeting cannot be presented or have been presented at any other meeting with publicly available published proceedings . papers that are being submitted to other conferences must indicate this on the title page . 1 . 3 format for submission the format of submissions is the same regardless of whether your are submitting a paper to the general sessions or the thematic sessions ; see the separate call for student papers for information on requirements for papers submitted to the student sessions . authors should submit preliminary versions of their papers for review , not to exceed 3200 words ( exclusive of references ) . papers should be headed by a title page containing the paper id code ( see below ) , the names of all authors , the title , a short ( 5 line ) summary , up to five keywords specifying the subject area ( for the general sessions ) or an indication of the thematic session to which the paper is being submitted , the word count ( excluding figures and bibliography ) and a notice of multiple submission , if required . papers outside the specified length and / or without an id code are liable to rejection without review . to identify each paper , an id code must be acquired by filing an electronic paper registration form , available on the web at http : / / www . mri . mq . edu . au / conf / acl99 / register . html : on successful completion of this form an id code will be sent to the designated author by e-mail . if you cannot access the electronic paper registration form , send email to acl99 @ mri . mq . edu . au with subject idform for an automatic reply . to assist in the refereeing process , we would be very grateful if authors prepare a web-browsable ( e . g . html , postscript , pdf ) electronic version of their papers . the electronic paper registration form contains a field where you can provide this information . we strongly recommend the use of acl - standard latex ( plus bibstyle and trivial example ) or word style files for the preparation of submissions . these styles include a place for the required information such as id code and word count , and allow for a graceful transition to the style required for publication . these files are available from the conference web site at http : / / www . mri . mq . edu . au / conf / acl99 . if you cannot use the acl - standard styles directly , a description of the required format is at http : / / www . mri . mq . edu . au / conf / acl99 / style / substyle . html . if you cannot access this web page , send email to acl99 @ mri . mq . edu . au with subject substyle for an automatic reply . 1 . 4 submission and reviewing procedure the submission procedure is the same regardless of whether your are submitting a paper to the general sessions or the thematic sessions ; see the separate call for student papers for information on submission details for papers submitted to the student sessions . four ( 4 ) paper copies of each paper ( printed on both sides of the page if possible ) should be submitted to the following address : acl programme committee c / o ken church at&t labs - research 180 park ave , office d235 po box 971 florham park nj 07932-0971 usa enquiries can be addressed to the programme committee by email at acl99 @ mri . mq . edu . au ( robert dale , chair and ken church , co - chair ) . in extreme cases , if you cannot make contact electronically you can reach us by sending a fax , clearly marked " acl programme committee " , to + 61 2 9850 9529 . this fax number is for information enquiries only . please note that faxed submissions of papers are not acceptable . reviewing of papers submitted to the general sessions will , as in previous years , be managed by an international conference programme committee consisting of area chairs , each of whom will have the assistance of a team of reviewers . reviewing of papers for the thematic sessions will be managed by the chairs of the thematic sessions , with the assistance of teams of reviewers ; final decisions on the technical programme content ( both general sessions and thematic sessions ) will be made by the programme committee . 1 . 5 schedule submissions must be received by january 25th 1999 . late submissions ( those arriving on or after january 26th 1999 ) will be returned unopened . acknowledgements will be emailed soon after receipt . notification of acceptance will be sent to authors ( by email ) on march 22nd 1999 . camera - ready copies of final papers prepared in a double-column format , preferably using a laser printer , must be received by may 3rd 1999 , along with a signed copyright release statement . detailed formatting guidelines will be provided to authors with their acceptance notice . the paper sessions , including general , theme and student papers , will take place on june 23rd - - 26th 1999 . 2 . student sessions there will again be special student sessions organized by a committee of acl graduate student members . acl student members are invited to submit short papers on any of the topics listed above for the general sessions . the papers will be reviewed by a committee of students and faculty members for presentation in workshop-style sessions and publication in a special section of the conference proceedings . a separate call for papers for the student sessions is being issued and is available at http : / / www . cs . utoronto . ca / ~ melanie / acl99 / . 3 . tutorials the meeting will include a programme of tutorials on june 20th 1999 immediately preceding the workshops and technical sessions , and at the same venue as the conference . a separate call for tutorial proposals is being issued and is available at http : / / www . bell-labs . com / project / tts / acl99tut . html . 4 . workshops as in other years , acl ' 99 will be accompanied by a number of workshops . these will be held on june 21st - - 22nd 1999 , immediately after the tutorials and before the technical sessions . the acl has a policy on workshops . a separate call for workshop proposals will be issued soon . 5 . demos a separate call for demo proposals will be issued at a later date . 6 . venue and local organisation the conference will be held at the university of maryland from 20th through 26th june , 1999 . the local arrangements committee is chaired by bonnie dorr ; see http : / / www . umiacs . umd . edu / research / clip / acl99 / index . html for local arrangements information . 7 . timetable the dates here pertain only to the general sessions and thematic sessions : see the separate calls for student session papers , tutorial proposals and workshops for the timetabling associated with those elements of the conference . paper submissions deadline : january 25 , 1999 notification of acceptance : march 22 , 1999 camera ready papers due : may 3 , 1999 acl ' 99 conference : june 20 - - 26 , 1999
