Subject: ijcai95 workshop on context in nlp

call for papers ijcai-95 workshop on context in natural language processing august 19 , 20 , or 21 , 1995 montreal , canada correct interpretation of natural language utterances and texts requires linguistic and non-linguistic context . the goal of this workshop is to investigate the nature of context in natural language , its role in natural language processing , and shed some light on this largely unexplored area of great theoretical and practical importance . dialogue and text processing are two application domains where the lack of good theories of context impedes significant progress in applying and developing new technologies . as speech technology matures , it becomes technically feasible to build dialogue systems . however , understanding dialogues , and especially multimodal dialogues , is not possible without some account of the role of context . similarly , with today 's text processing technology it is feasible to automatically create knowledge bases from fairly unconstrained texts such as newspaper archives . ignoring context in such texts , however , results in knowledge bases that are not only very incomplete , but also dramatically different from knowledge bases created by humans , based on the same texts . we invite papers from researchers active in the fields of natural language processing , knowledge representation , and other related areas addressing theoretical aspects of context and their implications for designing practical nlp systems . we are interested in reports on implemented nlp systems utilizing contextual information . we are also interested in knowledge representation systems , inference methods , and algorithms that would allow one to computationally handle specific aspects of context . agenda : our workshop will provide answers and insights into how to go about answering a number of questions , including the following : i : role of context in natural language what is context ? what is " context of the previous utterance / sentence " " context of the dialog-so - far / text-so - far " and what is the relationship between them ? how many different contexts are there ? what makes two contexts different ? what is the relationship between formalization of context and natural language ideas of context ? what is the status of context in a formal representation aiming at truthfully capturing all the characteristics of natural language ? is context an inherent characteristic of natural language that ultimately decides the formal power of natural language ? is natural language minus context a less powerful formal language ? does representing context and truthfully capturing characteristics of natural language require new knowledge representation or automated reasoning systems ? what is the relationship between context , and the semantics and pragmatics of natural language ? is context different from possible worlds and situations ? what is the relationship between domain ontologies and contexts ? ii : context-dependent interpretation of natural language in which way does context affect interpretation of natural language utterances and texts ? which aspects of context or which contexts result in refined , more general , and different interpretations of natural language ? which aspects of context are explicit and which are implicit in natural language utterances and texts ? which phenomena and inferences observed in natural language are context-independent and which ones always depend on context ? iii : computability does handling context increase or decrease computational complexity of natural language processing ? how to automatically identify context-provided constraints resulting in conveying and understanding additional or different aspects of information ? how to represent those extra constraints provided by context and how to automatically compute context-dependent interpretation of natural language ? should the final interpretation of natural language be decontextualized when stored in a knowledge base ? how can information obtained in one context be utilized in another , possibly unanticipated context ? workshop format : we will hold four sessions : i : role of context in natural language ii : context - dependent interpretation of natural language iii : computability iv : general discussion sessions i , ii , and iii will be mildly structured : first , the committee will present a brief overview of possible answers to the specific questions included in the agenda , and discuss their own answers . this presentation will be mixed with questions from the participants . second , the participants whose papers were accepted will briefly comment on their own answers to these questions . these presentations will also be mixed with questions from the participants . session iv , a general discussion , will give each participant a chance to make a statement about any context-related issue , make a comment , raise a question , argue for or against some answers etc . pre-worshop activities : a pre-workshop mailing list will be established ; please , indicate whether you want to be included ; in order to facilitate interaction and focus the discussion , two months before the workshop , we will provide all the participants with specific examples and data illustrating various aspects of context . authors + titles + abstracts of the accepted papers , but not the papers themselves , will be available on-line to everybody . the papers will only be available to the workshop participants . we hope that this will encourage people to make strong claims even if the support for them is not quite there , report on partial , ongoing , promising research , be frank in evaluating existing approaches and their own accomplishments , openly comment on limitations , in short , say all those ( very ) informative things that are sometimes difficult , if not impossible , to communicate in " official " publications . shared data , references , papers and the mailing list are to allow the participants to : - sort out as many as possible things before the workshop - help focusing the workshop discussion on the hardest and most controversial issues - raise objections and bring up controversial claims early on in order to prepare well thought of answers and constructive critique participants : a limited number , 30 or so , active participants will be selected on the basis of submitted papers . a small number , 5 or so , of no-paper - attendance-only participants will also be considered ; such persons should submit a one page research summary and a list of relevant publications . attendees are required to register for the main ijcai-95 conference . schedule / deadlines : very soon mosaic home page for the workshop set 3 . 15 . 95 papers received 4 . 03 . 95 selected papers accepted participants chosen 4 . 05 . 95 acceptance notifications sent to authors sent to ijcai selected papers to be included in the working notes list of confirmed participants request for equipment / room 4 . 15 . 95 mosaic home page for the workshop updated e-mail discussion begins 5 . 01 . 95 distributed to the participants final list of specific issues to be discussed at the workshop references to the existing work on context examples and data illustrating various aspects of context 7 . 15 . 95 final list of participants sent to ijcai 8 . 19 . 95 workshop takes place 12 . 01 . 95 written review of the workshop ready paper format : same as ijcai-95 : 12 pt article latex style 15 pages maximum , including title , abstract , figures , and references the first page must include : title author 's name ( s ) affiliation complete mailing address e-mail address phone / fax number ( s ) abstract of 200 or so words keywords submissions : electronic submissions are strongly preferred : direct : anonymous ftp to ftp . cs . wayne . edu ~ pub / context directory place the postscript or ascii version of your paper , your author + title + abstract ascii file , your references ( bibtex format preferred ) file , and a file with sample data and / or specific examples please , name your files with the name of the first author . for example , john block might place there the following : block . ps a . ps version of his paper block . text an ascii version of his paper if . ps not possible block-a . text an ascii file with authors names , title , and abstract block-r . bbl a bibliography file with references block-e . text an ascii file with sample data and / or specific examples email : lucja @ cs . wayne . edu as the last resort , four hard copies of the paper can be snail mailed to lucja iwanska department of computer science wayne state university detroit , mi 48202 , usa ( 313 ) 577-1667 ( phone ) ( 313 ) 577-2478 ( secretary ) ( 313 ) 577-6868 ( fax ) info about the workshop and the abstracts of the accepted papers is available via a mosaic home page at http : / / www . cs . wayne . edu / context primary contact : should you have any questions or need additional information , please contact lucja iwanska department of computer science wayne state university detroit , mi 48202 lucja @ cs . wayne . edu ( 313 ) 577-1667 ( phone ) ( 313 ) 577-2478 ( secretary ) ( 313 ) 577-6868 ( fax ) program committee : harry c . bunt , kub - university ( netherlands ) keith devlin , saint mary 's college ( usa ) r . v . guha , microelectronics and computer technology corporation ( usa ) lucja iwanska , wayne state university ( usa ) karen jensen , microsoft corporation ( usa ) john mccarthy , stanford university ( usa ) john f . sowa , suny at binghampton ( usa ) wlodek zadrozny , ibm tj watson research center ( usa )
