Subject: language resources & evaluation workshop

workshop announcement and call for papers linguistic coreference workshop 26 may 1998 , morning session held in conjunction with the first international conference on language resources and evaluation granada , spain ( 28-30 may 1998 ) workshop aims it is essential , for a natural language processing system , to instantiate each object , process , attribute , and property correctly , so that all references to the same item be recognized as such and an inventory of all distinct items be accurate at all times . this problem is far from being resolved . there are both linguistic and computational reasons for this deficiency . first , there is no satisfactory microtheory of linguistic coreference . secondly and consequently , there is no satisfactory application of such a microtheory to nlp . a microtheory of coreference in natural language includes in its scope all the phenomena that satisfy the following condition : an object / entity , an event , an attribute , a property or its value , an attitude , or any combination of the above is referred to more than once in a natural-language text , and the understanding of the text depends on the correct interpretation of the two or more referring expressions as designating the same object , event , etc . a linguistic microtheory of coreference for a language consists of the following elements : - a complete range of covered phenomena in the language ; - a taxonomy of the range ; - a typology of the range ; - a list of rules forming the various types of coreference ; - a list of rules interpreting the various types of coreference . there has been a considerable amount of work on a few selected types of coreference , focusing almost exclusively on object coreference . thus , significant work has been done in theoretical linguistics on anaphora and cataphora , subsuming , for the large part , earlier work on deixis . a small minority of authors have tried to extend their studies of anaphora beyond mere syntax . in the cognitive-linguistics and philosophy-of - language traditions , interesting work has been done relating anaphora and deixis to ambiguity resolution and discourse structure . at the same time , an effort in comparative-contrastive linguistics has led some writers to examining the data of more than one language at a time , still emphasizing entity or object reference . in computational linguistics , the problem of coreference took early on the form of pronoun antecedent resolution , and this particular task , somewhat broadened to include a few other types of anaphora , still remains in the center of the problem . the most sustained effort in the computational treatment of coreference has been mounted within the tipster / muc - 6 initiative . while it has been recognized since quite early in the game that coreference resolution is based in large part on world knowledge , most of the work done on the matter computationally and theoretically ignores and avoids world knowledge . the muc - 6 initiative makes such an orientation quite explicit : the work should be based on such simpler resources as part-of - speech tagging , simple noun phrase recognition , basic semantic category information like , gender , number , and [ to a limited extent ] full parse trees . such an approach - - trying to explore and maximize everything that can be done simply and cheaply towards the resolution of a complex program - - is perfectly legitimate as long as it is realized that a considerable part of the problem remains unsolved , and it is indeed realized fully well within the muc - 6 initiative . one persistent problem throughout the existing computational ventures into coreference has been the lack of a consistent theoretical approach to it . the result is that coreference phenomena are treated as self-obvious , and most of them are overlooked , especially if they are not explicit pronoun-antecedent or other equally evident anaphora cases . what is needed for a full , accurate , and reliable approach to coreference can be summarized , somewhat schematically , as involving the following steps : 1 . understanding fully the range of the phenomenon and of the rules that govern it ( theory ) ; 2 . determining the extent of machine-tractable information in the rules ; 3 . taking stock of all the rules that can be computed ; 4 . developing the appropriate heuristics for the computable rules ; 5 . computing the rules . workshop agenda the workshop will be held during the morning session of 26 may 1998 and will include a joint address by the organizing committee ( listed above ) , followed by 5 - 8 individual presentations in two 90-120 - minute blocks , with a break provided midway through . call for papers the workshop solicits papers addressing any one or more of the points addressed above as well as any other pertinent issues . papers based on a diversity of languages are encouraged , both one language at a time and , especially , comparative / contrastive studies . also strongly encouraged are papers which extend the study of coreference beyond entity / object reference , across document boundaries , and / or into non-text media . format for submission paper submissions should consist of an extended abstract of approximately 800 words , along with a brief description of the proposed presentation structure ( e . g . , paper , paper plus demo , etc . ) . each submission should include a separate title page , providing the following information : the title to be printed in the conference program ; names and affiliations of all authors ; the full address of the primary author ( or alternate contact person ) , including phone , fax , email ; and required audio-visual equipment . papers may be submitted by sending three hardcopies or one softcopy ( in tex , ascii , or post-script format ) to the appropriate address as listed below : dr . victor raskin chair , interdepartmental program in linguistics heavilon hall purdue university west lafayette , in 47907 usa vraskin @ purdue . edu submissions must be received no later than 1 march 1998 for a 15 march notification of paper acceptance . ( full versions of all accepted papers are requested no later than 15 april 1998 for inclusion in the conference proceedings . ) workshop organizing committee dr . sara j . shelton ( contact person ) us department of defense 9800 savage road , r525 ft meade , md 20755 usa sjshelt @ afterlife . ncsc . mil 301-688 - 0301 ( voice ) 301-688 - 0338 ( fax ) dr . eduard hovy information sciences institute university of southern california 4676 admirality way marina del rey , ca 90292-669 usa hovy @ isi . edu 310-822 - 1511 , ext . 731 ( voice ) dr . victor raskin interdepartmental program in linguistics heavilon hall purdue university west lafayette , in 47907 usa vraskin @ purdue . edu 765-494 - 3782 ( voice ) 765-494 - 3780 ( fax )
