Subject: workshop on dialogue and prosody

call for papers you are invited to submit an abstract plus title to the esca tutorial and research workshop on dialogue and prosody eindhoven ( the netherlands ) , september 1 - 3 , 1999 http : / / www . tue . nl / ipo / sli / etrw . html introduction the ipo , center for research on user - system interaction in eindhoven ( the netherlands ) , in association with the eindhoven university of technology ( tue ) and the european speech communication association ( esca ) , is pleased to announce a 3 - day workshop on dialogue and prosody , which will take place in the eindhoven area in the week before eurospeech ` 99 . anyone dealing with theoretical , empirical , computational or experimental approaches to the interplay between dialogue and prosody is invited to submit an abstract . we specifically welcome those contributions of which the content is directly relevant for human-computer interaction . motivation now that spoken dialogue systems are becoming more sophisticated , increasing demands are placed on the way these systems deal with prosody , both in the generation of system utterances as in the processing of user utterances . on the one hand , appropriate prosody may facilitate the processing of system utterances by users of a dialogue system . on the other hand , dialogue systems may profit from taking into consideration prosodic information of user utterances at different levels of representation . however , for experts in the area of prosody it is not always easy to link their work to the developments in the domain of dialogue modelling , whereas researchers working in the area of dialogue modelling often are rather naive with respect to prosodic modelling . the goal of the workshop is bringing together researchers from both domains to provide either group with a better view of developments in the other domain and in this way stimulate progress . format the format of the workshop will consist of keynote presentations by experts in the field of dialogue and prosody modelling , combined with oral and poster presentations of accepted papers . all presentations will be plenary . all contributions to the workshop will be published in workshop proceedings , that will consist of 4 - page camera-ready papers . as an additional result of the workshop , the organizers intend to produce a working document that will contain an overview of the state-of - the-art , some open research questions , and position statements regarding the theme of dialogue and prosody . in order to maximize the possibilities for fruitful discussion , the number of participants will be limited to about a hundred . priority wil be given to persons with accepted papers on a first-come first-served basis . topics questions in this domain that could be addressed at the workshop are for instance : - which prosodic features of user utterances help the system to improve performance with respect to asr , speech understanding , and dialogue management ( turn-taking , back-channeling ) ? - how can those features be extracted automatically and be made available at the right time ? - with which prosodic features should system utterances be provided to help the user extract the information conveyed by the system , and to improve the fluency of the interaction ? - to what extent are prosodic characteristics of user utterances in their interactions with dialogue systems different from those in human-human interaction ? - how do we deal with prosodic variability in interactions between humans and machines , for instance due to level of expertise ( novices versus experts ) ? submission procedure researchers working in this domain are invited to email a 400 - words abstract ( plain ascii format ) , together with title , affiliation and keywords to diapro @ ipo . tue . nl if electronic submission is not possible , please send 5 copies of a 1 - page abstract to ipo , center for research on user - system interaction etrw on dialogue and prosody p . o . box 513 nl-5600 mb eindhoven ( the netherlands ) scientific committee gosta bruce ( sweden ) nick campbell ( japan ) carlos gussenhoven ( the netherlands ) julia hirschberg ( usa ) daniel hirst ( france ) merle horne ( sweden ) jill house ( uk ) stephen isard ( uk ) johanna moore ( uk ) elmar noeth ( germany ) anton nijholt ( the netherlands ) mari ostendorf ( usa ) thomas portele ( germany ) stephen pulman ( uk ) angelien sanderman ( the netherlands ) elizabeth shriberg ( usa ) david traum ( usa ) gert veldhuijzen van zanten ( the netherlands ) marilyn walker ( usa ) venue the etrw on dialogue and prosody will take place in the koningshof conference center , which is located in a rural setting in veldhoven , at close distance from eindhoven ( www . koningshof . nl ) . important dates january 15 , 1999 : deadline for submission of title and abstract march 1 , 1999 : notification of acceptance , instruction for authors , information on accommodation july 1 , 1999 : deadline for 4 - page camerady-ready paper , early registration september 1 - 3 , 1999 : etrw on dialogue and prosody further information for further information , please contact marc swerts ( swerts @ ipo . tue . nl ) or jacques terken ( terken @ ipo . tue . nl ) . updated information will also be available at http : / / www . tue . nl / ipo / sli / etrw . html
