6.0230 CFP: Pacific Assn. Computational Linguistics (1/138)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Sun, 13 Sep 1992 21:36:32 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0230. Sunday, 13 Sep 1992.

Date: 6 Sep 92 10:53 -0700
From: Dan Fass <fass@cs.sfu.ca>
Subject: CFP: PACLING `93 computational linguistics conference

2ND CALL FOR PAPERS

PACLING '93
1st Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics Conference

(formerly JAJSNLP, the Japan-Australia Joint
Symposia on Natural Language Processing)

April 21-24 (Wed-Sat) 1993
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada


HISTORY AND AIMS
PACLING (= Pacific Association for Computational LINGuistics) has grown out of
the very successful Japan-Australia joint symposia on natural language
processing (NLP) held in November 1989 in Melbourne, Australia and in October
1991 in Iizuka City, Japan.

PACLING '93 will be a low-profile, high-quality, workshop-oriented meeting
whose aim is to promote friendly scientific relations among Pacific Rim
countries, with emphasis on interdisciplinary scientific exchange showing
openness towards good research falling outside current dominant "schools of
thought," and on technological transfer within the Pacific region.
The conference is a unique forum for scientific and technological exchange,
being smaller than ACL, COLING or Applied NLP, and also more regional with
extensive representation from the Western Pacific (as well as the Eastern).

TRANSCENDING LANGUAGE BOUNDARIES
The theme of PACLING '93 is "transcending language boundaries" by:

o facilitating communication between speakers of different languages --
e.g., with machine translation and computer-aided language learning,

o going beyond limitations of natural language as a communicative medium --
the conference has a particular interest in the theory and practice of
natural-language centred multi-modal architectures, systems, interfaces
and design issues, not only in work that improves existing computational
linguistic techniques, but also in computational (or computationally
oriented) research for complementing the communicative strengths of
natural language and overcoming its weaknesses.

GUEST SPEAKERS
Dr. Takao Gunji, Osaka University, Japan.
"An Overview of JPSG --- A Constraint-Based Grammar for Japanese."

Dr. George Heidorn, Microsoft Corporation, USA.
"Industrial Strength NLP: The Challenge of Broad Coverage."

Dr. Kathleen McKeown, Columbia University, USA.
"Language Generation as Part of Multimedia Explanation."

(These are tentative talk titles.)

TOPICS
Original papers are invited on any topic in computational linguistics (and
strongly related areas) including (but not limited to) the following:

Language subjects:
text, speech;
pragmatics, discourse, semantics, syntax, the lexicon, morphology,
phonology, phonetics;
language and communication channels, e.g., touch, movement, vision, sound;
language and input/output devices, e.g., keyboards, menus, touch screens,
mice, light pens, graphics (including animation);
language and context, e.g., from the subject domain, discourse, spatial
and temporal deixis.

Approaches and architectures:
computational linguistic, multi-modal but natural-language centred;
formal, knowledge-based, statistical, connectionist;
dialogue, user, belief or other model-based;
parallel/serial processing.

Applications:
text and message understanding and generation, language translation
and translation aids, language learning and learning aids;
question-answering systems and interfaces to multi-media databases
(text, audio/video, (geo)graphic);
terminals for Asian and other languages, user interfaces;
natural language-based software.

SUBMISSIONS
Authors should prepare full papers, in English, of not more than 5000 words
including references, approximately 20 double-spaced pages. The title page
must include: author's name, postal address, e-mail address (if applicable),
telephone and fax numbers; a brief 100-200 word summary; some key words for
classifying the submission.

Please send four (4) copies of each submission to:

Paul McFetridge and Fred Popowich email: mcfet@cs.sfu.ca
PACLING '93 Program Co-Chairs tel: (604) 291-3632
Centre for Systems Science email: popowich@cs.sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University tel: (604) 291-4193
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6 fax: (604) 291-4424

SCHEDULE
Submission deadline: Monday Nov 30th 1992
Notification of acceptance: Friday Jan 29th 1993
Camera-ready copy due: Friday Mar 5th 1993

PUBLICITY AND LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS
The conference will take place at the downtown Vancouver extension of Simon
Fraser University. We have negotiated preferential rates from downtown hotels
at $Canadian 43, 65 and 82 per person per night. On one day of the conference,
a coach trip is planned to Whistler, a picturesque local mountain and ski
resort. For further information on the conference and on local arrangements,
contact

Dan Fass email: fass@cs.sfu.ca
PACLING '93 Publicity and Local Arrangements tel: (604) 291-3208
Centre for Systems Science fax: (604) 291-4424
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6


PACLING '93 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Chair:
Naoyuki Okada (Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan)
Members:
Naoyuki Okada (Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan)
Christian Matthiessen (University of Sydney, Australia)
Nick Cercone (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Yorick Wilks (New Mexico State University, USA)
Local Members:
Hiroaki Tsurumaru (Nagasaki University, Japan)
Roland Sussex (Queensland University, Australia)
Dan Fass, Paul McFetridge, Fred Popowich (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Advisors:
Graeme Hirst (University of Toronto, Canada)
Observers:
Minako O'Hagan (New Zealand Translation Center, New Zealand)

SPONSORS
Natural Language Understanding and Models of Communication interest group of
the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan,
the Australian Computer Science Society, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent
Systems of Canada, the Advanced Systems Institute of British Columbia.