Corpora: Call for papers: Coling/ACL 98 workshop on Discourse

Eduard Hovy (hovy@ISI.EDU)
Wed, 26 Nov 1997 12:27:42 -0800 (PST)

Call for papers

Coling/ACL 98 workshop
Discourse Relations and Discourse Markers

August 15, 1998
Universite de Montreal
Montreal/Canada

The notion of discourse relation has received many interpretations, some
of which are hardly compatible with one another. Nonetheless, there is a
consensus among researchers that intersegment relations hold between
adjacent portions of a text and that these relations may be signalled by
linguistic means, including so-called cue phrases, aspect and mood shifts,
theme inversions, and other markers.

The workshop intends to bring together researchers working on discourse
relations and discourse markers in different linguistic traditions and
different NLP applications. The particular focus of the workshop is
the issue of discourse relations from the viewpoint of linguistic
realization. Specifically, contributions should address one or more of
the following questions:

* What are sound methodologies for comparing similar discourse markers
(contrastive studies, distribution analyses, etc.)?

* What are sound methodologies for relating discourse relations with
potential realizations?

* Are there discourse relations that are *always* lexically signalled?
Are there any that are *never* lexically signalled?

* What non-lexical (i.e., syntactic or prosodic) means are used to signal
a relation?

* In production, how does one decide whether to signal a relation at
all?

* In production, how does one motivate a choice among candidate signals
for a given relation?

* In production, how does the choice of signal interact with other
decisions (in particular, those of linearizing some tree or graph
structure)?

* In analysis, is it possible to reliably infer discourse relations from
surface cues?

* In analysis, how can one disambiguate polysemous signals such as
"and", "since" (temporal or causal) etc.?

* What are useful lexical representations of discourse markers, for both
analysis and production?

* What are useful representations of discourse relations (and the entities
they relate), such that they facilitate the realization decision? What
features would one like to have handy in a representation so that choices
can be made easily?

* Are there significant differences between realizations in spoken and
written language?

* How do individual languages differ in terms of any of the above issues?

Organizing committee

The workshop is organized by
Manfred Stede (Technical University, Berlin)
Leo Wanner (University of Stuttgart)
Eduard Hovy (ISI/USC, Marina del Rey)

This call for papers as well as future information on the workshop can
be found at http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~marker/aclcolingws.html

Requirements for submission

Papers are invited that address any of the topics listed above. Maximum
length is 8 pages including figures and references. Please use A4 or US
letter format and set margins so that the text lies within a rectangle of
6.5 x 9 inches (16.5 x 23 cm). Use classical fonts such as Times Roman or
Computer Modern, 11 to 12 points for text, 14 to 16 points for headings
and title. LaTeX users are encouraged to use the style file provided by
ACL: http://coling-acl98.iro.umontreal.ca/colaclsub.sty.

Papers can be submitted either electronically in PostScript format, or
as hardcopies. Submission from North America should be sent to:
Eduard Hovy
Information Sciences Institute
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
U.S.A.
hovy@isi.edu

Submissions from elsewhere should be sent to either of the following:
Manfred Stede Leo Wanner
TU Berlin Computer Science Department
KIT Project Group Intelligent Systems
Sekr. FR 6-10 University of Stuttgart
Franklinstr. 28/29 Breitwiesenstr. 20-22
D-10587 Berlin D-70565 Stuttgart
Germany Germany
stede@cs.tu-berlin.de wannerlo@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de

Timetable

Deadline for electronic submissions: March 10, 1998
Deadline for hardcopy submissions: March 13 (arrival date)
Notification of acceptance: May 1, 1998
Final manuscripts due: June 12, 1998

Program committee

o Sandra Carberry (U Delaware)
o Barbara DiEugenio (U Pittsburgh)
o Eduard Hovy (USC/ISI)
o Alistair Knott (U Edinburgh)
o Alex Lascarides (U Edinburgh)
o Owen Rambow (Cogentex Inc.)
o Ted Sanders (U Utrecht)
o Donia Scott (U Brighton)
o Wilbert Spooren (U Tilburg)
o Manfred Stede (TU Berlin)
o Keith Vander Linden (Calvin College)
o Marilyn Walker (ATT Laboratories)
o Leo Wanner (U Stuttgart)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eduard Hovy
email: hovy@isi.edu USC Information Sciences Institute
tel: 310-822-1511 ext 731 4676 Admiralty Way
fax: 310-823-6714 Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695
project homepage: http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/nlp-at-isi.html