**************************************************************************** 2nd Call for Papers COLING-2004 Workshop: Psycho-computational Models of Human Language Acquisition Geneva Switzerland 28 August 2004 http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ Workshop Topic -------------- The workshop will be devoted to psychologically motivated computational models of language acquisition -- models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics -- with particular emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. Invited panel: Learning Biases in Language Acquisition Models ---------------------------------------------------------------- Walter Daelemans, Antwerp and Tilburg Charles D. Yang, Yale Invited speaker --------------- Elan Dresher, Toronto Workshop Description and Motivation ----------------------------------- In recent decades there has been a great deal of successful research that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies, along with many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been few venues in which psycho- computational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the focus. Psycho-computational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology which suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. However, this begs the question of whether or not a psychologically plausible statistical learning strategy can be successfully exploited in a full- blown psycho-computational acquisition model. Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories and phonology, research aimed at psychologically motivated modeling of syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge. The principal goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers who work within computational linguistics, formal learning theory, machine learning, artificial intelligence, linguistics, psycholinguistics and other fields, who have created or are investigating computational models of language acquisition. In particular, it will provide a forum for establishing links and common themes between diverse paradigms. Although research which directly addresses the acquisition of syntax is strongly encouraged, related studies that inform research on the acquisition of syntax are also welcome. Papers are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics: * Acquisition models that contain a parsing component * Models that have a cross-linguistic or bilingual perspective * Models that address the question of learning bias in terms of innate linguistic knowledge versus statistical regularity in the input * Models that can acquire natural language word-order * Hybrid models that cross established paradigms * Models that directly make use of or can be used to evaluate existing linguistic or developmental theories in a computational framework (e.g. the principles & parameters framework or Optimality Theory) * Empirical models that make use of child-directed corpora * Formal models that incorporate psychologically plausible constraints * Comparative surveys, across multiple paradigms, that critique previously published studies Paper Length: Submissions should be no longer than 8 pages (A4 or the equivalent). High-quality short papers or extended abstracts of 4 to 5 pages are encouraged. Submission and format details are below. Lunch session: Word-order acquisition -------------------------------------- The topic of this session will be the acquisition of different natural language word-orders. The workshop will provide a common test-bed of abstract sentence patterns from word order divergent languages. The shared data contains the sentence patterns and cross-linguistic fully-specified parses for each sentence pattern. The patterns are available at: www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/grammar/data/allsentences.zip General information and a web interface for perusing the data can be found at: www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/grammar Due to the limited amount of time available to work with novel data, pilot studies are encouraged. The session will consist of short presentations and roundtable discussion. Submissions for this session are limited to 2 pages. Those who may be interested in submitting to this session should contact the workshop organizer before the submission deadline for further details. Dates of submissions Submission deadline: 30 March 2004 Acceptance notification: 14 May 2004 Camera-ready deadline: 10 June 2004 Workshop date: 28 August 2004 Workshop Organizer William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York (sakas@hunter.cuny.edu) Program Committee * Robert Berwick, MIT, USA * Antal van den Bosch, Tilburg University, The Netherlands * Ted Briscoe, University of Cambridge, UK * Damir Cavar, Indiana University, USA * Morten H. Christiansen, Cornell University, USA * Stephen Clark, University of Edinburgh, UK * James Cussens, University of York, UK * Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp, Belgium and Tilburg University, The Netherlands * Jeffrey Elman, University of California, San Diego, USA * Janet Dean Fodor, City University of New York, USA * Gerard Kempen, Leiden University, The Netherlands and The Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen * Vincenzo Lombardo, University of Torino, Italy * Larry Moss, University of Indiana, USA * Miles Osborne, University of Edinburgh, UK * Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA * Ivan Sag, Stanford University, USA * Jeffrey Siskind, Purdue University, USA * Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh, UK * Menno van Zaanen, Tilburg University, The Netherlands * Charles Yang, Yale University, USA Paper Submission ---------------- Length: Submissions should be no more than 8 pages (A4 or equivalent). High- quality short papers or extended abstracts of 4 to 5 pages are encouraged. Submissions to the lunch session on word-order should be no more than 2 pages. (If accepted, final camera ready versions may be up to 8 pages or 5 pages for the word-order submissions.) Layout: Papers must conform to COLING 2004 formatting guidelines, available at: http://www.issco.unige.ch/coling2004/coling2004downloads.html Electronic Submission: All submissions will be by email. Reviews will be blind, so be careful not to disclose authorship or affiliation. PDF submissions are preferred and will be required for the final camera-ready copy. Submissions should be sent as an attachment to: Psycho.Comp@hunter.cuny.edu. The subject line must contain the single word: Submission. Please be sure to include accurate contact information in the body of the email. Contact: Psycho.Comp@hunter.cuny.edu or sakas@hunter.cuny.edu http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/