CL Special Issue on Empirical Studies in Discourse: Deadline Dec 1st

walker (walker@merl.com)
Fri, 06 Oct 95 16:28:04 -0400

Apologies to those who get this multiple times.

*** Deadline Extended to December 1st***
Call for Submissions
Special Issue of Computational Linguistics
Empirical Studies in Discourse Interpretation and Generation
Guest Editors: Johanna D. Moore and Marilyn A. Walker

Computational theories of discourse interpretation and generation are an
important basis for the design and implementation of many natural language
applications. However, much work in computational theories of discourse to
date has focused on specifying the mechanisms underlying a particular
discourse phenomenon. It is often difficult to tell how prevalent that
phenomenon is, whether it is related to other observed and studied phenomena,
and what percentage of the cases a particular theory covers. Developing
robust, broad coverage, theories of discourse requires an empirical basis,
but there has been little effort to develop shared methods, tools or
resources for the discourse community. However, recently there has been a
groundswell of interest in developing both manual and automatic methods for
analyzing discourse in order to inform computational models, e.g the AAAI
Spring Symposium in March 1995 on Empirical Methods in Discourse
Interpretation and Generation.

The goal of the special issue of Computational Linguistics on Empirical
Studies in Discourse Interpretation and Generation is to bring together a
collection of papers representing recent work illustrating different
techniques in this area such as: discourse coding schemes and methods for
assessing their reliability; automatic analysis techniques, their accuracy,
and use for discourse processing; learning of discourse processing strategies
from coded corpora; schemes for evaluation of discourse processing systems;
and use of simulated discourse agents for discourse modeling. We seek papers
that go beyond purely methodological issues; papers should exhibit different
techniques with major emphasis on the results obtained.

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is December 1st, 1995. For hard
copy submission: Six double-spaced hard copies should be submitted, clearly
marked as submissions to the Special Issue on Empirical Studies in Discourse
Interpretation and Generation, to arrive on or before the deadline, to the
following address:

Julia Hirschberg, Editor
Computational Linguistics
2C-409
AT&T Bell Laboratories
600 Mountain Avenue
Murray Hill NJ 07974
USA

email: acl@research.att.com
tel: 908-582-7496
fax: 908-582-7550

Manuscripts may be submitted electronically; instructions are currently
available by anonymous ftp from ftp.research.att.com:/dist/cl/elec.sub.