Date: 21 May 1995 ----------------- ====================================================================== TOPICS (search for "Topic n"): 1. Job Offer: Multilingual Text Generation Marc.Dymetman@xerox.fr 2. 7th European Summer School in Logic Language and Information Spain. 3. CFP NLP Pacific-Rim Symposium - Deadline June 20 1995 4. EWNLG 5 Programme and Call for participation 20-22 May 1995 5. Dagstuhl Reports on NLG Workshop available horacek@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE 6. Grammar Laboratories for Macintosh lager@ling.gu.se 7. Job Offer: Natural Language Processing/Canon Research - Guildford, UK 8. Comp Ling Summer School - Bulgaria - Contemp. Topics in CL 9-13 Sept 95 9. Searchable NLG bib: http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Ai/nlg.html 10. Lexicalization survey available stede@faw.uni-ulm.de ====================================================================== NOTE FROM SIGGEN Sorry for the long gap since the last posting. Long posting today because of the accumulated backlog. News from the WWW front: A/ I have found that the E-Print Archive maintained at http://xxx.lanl.gov/cmp-lg/ is a great resource to read the latest in comp.linguistics in general. I encourage you all to check it out with your favorite WWW browser and to submit your papers to it as well. Extremely valuable. B/ Check Topic 9 for a nice interface to Mark Kantrowitz's bibliography accessible at: http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Ai/nlg.html This mailing list is open to you all members (226 at the latest count). Send email to: siggen@black.bgu.ac.il to submit. Post here paper announcements, job offer, conference announcements and programmes, questions/reflection on your research, lab description, etc... Best, Michael Elhadad, SIGGEN List administrator ====================================================================== Topic 1: From: Marc.Dymetman@xerox.fr (Marc Dymetman) Subject: Job Offer: Multilingual Text Generation POSITION IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS Rank Xerox Research Centre Grenoble France The Multilingual Theory and Technology group of the Rank Xerox Research Centre invites applications for a researcher position in computational linguistics. DUTIES: Participate in the conception and implementation of a multilingual text generation system under development at RXRC. The primary domain of application is the automatic generation of statistical reports from numerical data. The emphasis is in developing principled solutions to some outstanding problems in text generation, rather than in relying on ill-motivated shortcuts. Keywords: Denotational Semantics, Logical-Forms, Object-Oriented Data Models, Multi-Sentential Paraphrases, Redundancy Elimination, LFG Realization, Reversibility, Message Planning. REQUIREMENTS: Applicants should have a Ph.D. in linguistics or computer science, with specialization in computational linguistics, or a proven track-record of high-quality research in this area. They should have previous experience or a strong interest in text generation. An interest for formal methods and a background in unification grammars, formal semantics and/or the semantics/syntax interface are important assets. Good programming skills and practice are necessary (knowledge of Prolog useful). Creativity is essential as is the ability to communicate effectively with fellow researchers. Fluency in English is required, knowledge of French or German desirable. TERMS: The position is open for an initial term of two years. Salary will be based upon qualifications and relevant experience. There is no specific deadline for the application, but we hope to fill the position by August 1995. Applications (email preferred): Annie Zaenen annie.zaenen@xerox.fr RXRC, 6 chemin de Maupertuis, 38240 Meylan, France fax: +33 76 61 50 99 ====================================================================== From: kathrine@gilcub.es (Ms. Kathrine Wenham) Subject: 7th European Summer School in Logic Language and Information Spain. SEVENTH EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL IN LOGIC LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION Barcelona, August 14-25 1995 For More Information Contact: ESSLLI95 GILCUB Avda. Vallvidrera 25 08017 Barcelona Fax +34 3 2054656 E-mail esslli95@gilcub.es GENERAL INFORMATION The Summer School The Seventh European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information will be held at the Biology Faculty of Barcelona University from August 14th to 25th. The School is organized under the auspices of the European Foundation of Logic, Language and Information (Folli), jointly by Universitat de Barcelona, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. The previous Summer Schools took place at Rijks universiteit Groningen in the Netherlands in 1989, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium in 1990, at the Universitat Saarlandes, Saarbrucken in Germany in 1991, at the University of Essex Colchester in the United Kingdomin 1992, at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal in 1993, and at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark in 1994. For these Schools financial support was derived from a variety of sources, including the Commision of the European Community, through the ERASMUS programme and the DG XIII, Research Networks, National Research Councils, and industrial sponsors. The same kind of support is expected for the 1995 School. The main focus of the Summer School is the interface between logic, linguistics and computation, where it concerns the modelling of human linguistic and cognitive abilities. The 1995 School programme will include courses, workshops, and symposia covering a variety of topics within six areas of interest: Logic, Language, Computation, Logic and Computation, Computation and Language, Language and Logic. Courses will be cast at both introductory and advanced levels. Introductory courses are designed to familiarize students with new fields and do not presuppose any background knowledge, while advanced courses are designed to allow participants to acquire more specialized expertise in areas they are already familiar with. Workshops will be chaired by an expert in the field and will provide an opportunity for PhD students and other young researchers to present their work and gain informed feedback and useful contacts. Symposia will typically consist of a series of presentations on a timely topic by people active in the relevant areas. Both workshops and symposia are intended to encourage collaboration and cross fertilization of ideas by stimulatingin-depth discussion of issues which are at the forefront of current research in the field. There will also be a series of invited evening lecturers by well-known experts in their field. LECTURERS: Logic and Language: G Link, J van Eijck, J Jaspars, A Visser, C.Vermeulen, M Kracht, B Keller, M Kanazawa, D de Jongh, F Moltmann, C Fox, H Rott, R Cooper, M Poesio. Logic: R Jansana, I Hodkinson, J Flum, P Blackburn, M de Rijke, Y de Venema, J Font, K Devlin. Computation and Logic: D Basin, S Mathews, F Baader, G Koestler, H Barringer, D Gabbay, C Brink, L Wallen, M Marx, S Mikulas, F Baader, K Schlecta. Computation: C Paulin-Mohring, N Jones, L Meertens, S Peyton-Jones, B Haglund. Language and Computation: E Stabler, M Johnson, R Bod, R Scha, M Moortgat, M Dalrymple, R Kaplan, B Carpenter, G Morrill, V Abrusci, R Dale, M Ellison, F Verdejo, R Kempson. Language: P Miller, J Bresnan, H Verkuyl, H Clahsen, D Oehrle, J Doerre,S Manandhar, A Zaenen, L Sadler. Contact kathrine@gilcub.es (Ms. Kathrine Wenham) for details. ====================================================================== From: chopin@world.kaist.ac.kr (Chopin) Subject: CFP NLP Pacific-Rim Symposium NLPRS '95 - CALL FOR PAPER Third Natural Language Processing Pacific-Rim Symposium Seoul, Korea December 4-6, 1995 NLPRS'95, which will be held from December 4-6, 1995 in Seoul, Korea, is the third forums to bring together NLP researchers in the Pacific-Rim area for scientific exchange and presentation. The program will include tutorials, invited talks, and demonstrations as well as tracks for paper and video presentations. NLPRS95 is organized jointly by: SIG-KLC(Korean Language Computing) of KISS (Korean Information Science Society) SIG-NLP of IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan) In cooperation with The Linguistic Society of Korea The Korean Society for Cognitive Science TOPICS OF INTEREST: Submissions are solicited on original and previously unpublished research in all aspects of NLP, including, but not limited to: phonetics generation phonology parsing morphology machine(-aided)translation syntax linguistic models of natural language semantics natural language interface and dialog systems pragmatics language-oriented information retrieval discourse corpus-based language modelling PAPER SUBMISSION: Papers of no longer than 6 pages in the double-column conference format should be submitted by 20th June, 1995. We strongly encourage papers to be electronically submitted. In this case, they should be in either LaTeX format or plain text, and should be emailed to : nlprs95@cair.kaist.ac.kr If electronic submission is not possible, three hard copies of the paper should be sent to: Mr. J.M. KIM NLPRS'95 Secretariat Foreign Tourist Dept II Hanjin Travel Service Co.,Ltd.(Conference Agency) 132-4, 1-ka, Bongrae-dong, Chung-ku, 100-161, Seoul, Korea Phone:+82-2-726-5540, Fax:+82-2-773-1623 DEADLINES: Paper Submission: June 20, 1995 Notification of Acceptance: August 30, 1995 Camera Ready Copy Due: September 30, 1995 ACCOMMODATIONS: Hotel Sofitel Ambassador is designated for the Symposium accommodation. Room rate is specially reduced as US$100.-/night approximately for single, double or twin type. The above rate includes 10% service charge & 10% VAT, but it does not include breakfast. Hotel reservation should be made through the Secretariat. The WWW version of this CFP is also avaiable at: URL:http//cair.kaist.ac.kr/~nlprs95/NLPRS95.html ====================================================================== From: deSmedt@alf.uib.no Subject: EWNLG 5 Programme and Call for participation CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 5th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation 20-22 May 1995 Leiden, The Netherlands This workshop aims to bring together researchers interested in Natural Language Generation from such different perspectives as linguistics, artificial intelligence, psychology, and engineering. The meeting continues the tradition of a series of workshops held biannually in Europe (Royaumont, 1987; Edinburgh, 1989; Judenstein, 1991 and Pisa, 1993) but open to researchers from all over the world. The workshop is supported by the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW). Preliminary Programme --------------------- The Programme Committee consists of: Koenraad de Smedt (University of Bergen; chair) Chris Mellish (University of Edinburgh) Hans Joachim Novak (IBM Deutschland). SATURDAY 20 MAY 16:00-18:00 registration 18:00 dinner 20:00 opening & invited talk (to be confirmed) SUNDAY 21 MAY 9:00-10:00 Ma(r)king concessions in English and German Brigitte Grote, Nils Lenke, Manfred Stede 10:00-10:30 Interaction between syntax and semantics: The case of gerund translation Stephan Mehl 10:30-11:00 break 11:00-12:00 More on generating referring expressions Helmut Horacek 12:00-14:00 lunch 14:00-14:30 Personalised explanations for patient education Alison Cawsey, Kim Binsted, Ray Jones 14:30-15:00 The IDAS user trials: Quantitative evaluation of an applied natural language generation system John Levine, Chris Mellish 15:00-15:30 NLG vs. templates Ehud Reiter 15:30-16:00 panel discussion on applied NLG 16:00-16:30 break 16:30-17:30 Presenting punctuation. Michael White. 17:30-18:00 A tactical generator for German combining HPSG and FUF Johannes Matiasek, Ernst Buchberger 18:00 dinner; evening free MONDAY 22 MAY 9:00-9:30 Generating explanations across several user models: Maximizing belief while avoiding boredom and overload Ingrid Zukerman, Richard McConachy 9:30-10:30 Employing user attitudes in text planning Matthias Koelln 10:30-11:00 break 11:00-12:00 Incremental computation of information structure and its empirical foundation Carsten Guenther, Andrea Schopp, Soenke Ziesche 12:00-12:30 Choosing rhetorical relations in instructional texts: The case of effects and guidances Leila Kosseim, Guy Lapalme 12:30-14:00 lunch 14:30-16:30 demos (at Leiden University) Demo: KPML: The KOMET-Penman multilingual linguistic resource development environment John Bateman Demo: The grammar of the English cardinal numbers Robin Fawcett Demo: Interfacing knowledge: Text generation from knowledge systems Sabine Geldof Demo: Sentence generation using the systemic workbench Michael O'Donnell Demo: Drafter: A drafting tool for the production of multilingual instructions Cecile Paris, Keith Vander Linden, Markus Fischer, Anthony Hartley, Lyn Pemberton, Richard Power, Donia Scott During the whole workshop: Poster: Aggregation in the generation of argumentative texts Armin Fiedler, Xiaorong Huang Venue and Local arrangements ---------------------------- Local arrangements are handled by Gerard Kempen (Leiden University), contact through secretary Mrs. Burgel (burgel@rulfsw.leidenuniv.nl). The meeting will be held from the afternoon of Saturday May 20, 1995 through the afternoon of Monday 22, in Conference Centre Oud-Poelgeest in Leiden. The estate consists of a hotel, meeting rooms, restaurant, sauna, and a 17th century castle with a bar, situated in a 25 acre park, 5 min. by taxi from the centre of Leiden. The city of Leiden, where Rembrandt was born, has the oldest university in The Netherlands. Leiden is 15 min. by train from Amsterdam (Schiphol) airport. More detailed information will be sent out to registered participants. Registration form ----------------- N.B.: Please edit this form and send it back by e-mail to desmedt@foli.uib.no. ALSO send a signed hardcopy with payment BEFORE 30 APRIL to: EWNLG 5 c/o Mrs. Marijke Burgel Leiden University Dept. of Experimental and Theoretical Psychology P.O. Box 9555 2300 RB Leiden The Netherlands - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I will attend the 5th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation to be held in Leiden from 20 to 22 May 1995. Name: Institution: Full address: E-mail: Telephone: Fax: Signature: Accommodation and meals details: The fee for the workshop, including registration, preprints, accommodation, meals, coffee, tea and refreshments from dinner on 20 May until lunch on 22 May (inclusive) is dependent on the chosen accommodation (see below). No reductions are possible for people using only part of the services provided. [ ] Single room: DFL 490 (number restricted) [ ] Double room: DFL 390; I wish to share with: ... [ ] I do not need a room: DFL 175 [ ] I require special meals (please indicate): ... For those who want more: [ ] Additional night before the workshop in single room: + DFL 110 [ ] Additional night after the workshop in single room: + DFL 110 [ ] Additional night before the workshop in double room: + DFL 75 [ ] Additional night after the workshop in double room: + DFL 75 (applicable when the person sharing the room also stays) [ ] Additional copy of the preprints: + DFL 15 (a limited number are also available for people not attending) Payment details: Total amount to be paid: ... [ ] I transfer money to: Bank: POSTBANK, The Netherlands Swift code: INGBNL2A Account number: 72828 Beneficiary: Leiden University, Faculty of Social Sciences Address: Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, The Netherlands Reason of payment: please write 'FAS 6-48032' and your name [ ] I enclose a cheque [ ] I will pay cash in Dutch guilders on the first day of the workshop ====================================================================== From: horacek@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE Subject: Dagstuhl Reports now available Reports from the Seminar "Principles of Natural Language Generation" held at Dagstuhl Manor, 25th to 29 July 1994 are now available. Two reports have been produced in connection with that workshop. "Principles of Natural Language Generation Papers from a Dagstuhl Seminar" W. Hoeppner, H. Horacek (eds.) contains 14 fully elaborated papers submitted to that workshop. This report has appeared under "Schriftenreihe Informatik, Bericht Nr. SI-12" at University of Duisburg, February 1995. Copies can be obtained from Wolfgang Hoeppner email: he232ho@unicui.uni-duisburg.de Gerhard Mercator Universitaet GH Duisburg FB Computerlinguistik Lotharstr. 65 D-47048 Duisburg, Germany "Principles of Natural Language Generation" W. Hoeppner, H. Horacek, J. Moore (eds.) contains summaries of the talks held during the workshop and detailed reports of the 4 discussion groups. This report is the official Dagstuhl report; it has appeared under "Dagstuhl-Seminar-Report; 93 25.07.-29.07.94 (9430)" Copies can be obtained from the office at Schloss Dagstuhl email: office@dag.uni-sb.de Geschaeftsstelle Schloss Dagstuhl Universitaet des Saarlandes Postfach 151150 D-66041 Saarbruecken, Germany Helmut Horacek ====================================================================== From: lager@ling.gu.se (Torbj(rn Lager) Subject: Grammar Laboratories ***** Grammar Laboratories ***** for the Macintosh by ***** LINGUISTIC INSTRUMENTS ***** A Campus Company at the Department of Linguistics Goteborg University Linguistic Instruments is a small company specializing in research instruments and teaching programs for linguists. In our series of *Grammar Laboratories* for the Macintosh we currently offer four packages: - Phrase Structure Grammar Laboratory - Definite Clause Grammar Laboratory - PATR Laboratory - Categorial Grammar Laboratory The Grammar Laboratories are systems for writing grammars in a form that may be manipulated by a computer. They are designed as aids for students to explore formal grammars for natural language. They help the student understand the relationship between strings, rules, and trees, to grasp the concepts of parsing and generation, the notions of syntactic ambiguity and recursion, as well as other important concepts of general and computational linguistics. For the researcher, although the grammar laboratories should not be regarded as full-fledged grammar development environments, they are nevertheless useful for testing out ideas, in a quick and simple way. Moreover, the programs are able to display analysis trees and feature structures graphically, the graphics can be formatted in all sorts of ways, and subsequently exported to other applications. Each program has two tools, a parser and a generator. The Parser tool parses sentences and graphically displays the corresponding categories and trees (if any). The Generator tool accepts as input a start symbol and a specification of a maximal tree depth, and (randomly or systematically) generates any combination of a string, spoken utterance, category symbol, or tree. The Grammar Laboratories form an integrated package with a generic design. Nevertheless, each laboratory has some distinguishing features: - PSG Laboratory: A useful tool for introductory courses. It directly supports the standard notation for (context-free) phrase structure grammar, including conventions for optional and alternative constituents. - DCG Laboratory: An environment for Definite Clause Grammar supporting variable categories, left-recursive rules, and a limited use of escape to Prolog. - PATR Laboratory: Over and above the standard PATR formalism, this system supports list-valued features and feature structure variables. The graphical display of feature structures is enhanced with colour coding for reentrancy. - CG Laboratory: Grammatical analyses can be displayed either in ordinary phrase structure trees or in the special kind of annotated proof trees characteristic of categorial grammar. The Grammar Laboratories are *real* Macintosh applications, with all the functionality and user-friendliness that you have learned to expect from Macintosh programs. Each package comes with printed documentation in the form of a 20 pages booklet, as well as a collection of sample grammars. Fully functional versions of the Grammar Laboratories, freely distributed for evaluation, can be retrieved by anonymous ftp from the following site: hjelmslev.ling.gu.se Go to the directory /pub/li Retrieve the following files: psg-laboratory-111.hqx dcg-laboratory-111.hqx patr-laboratory-111.hqx cg-laboratory-111.hqx * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Linguistic Instruments Dept of Linguistics Goeteborg University S-412 98 Goeteborg Sweden E-mail: li@ling.gu.se Fax: +46-31-773 48 53 ====================================================================== From: wachtel@canon.co.uk (Tom Wachtel) Subject: Job Offer: Natural Language Processing/Canon Research JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd Guildford, UK Canon Research Centre Europe is looking for new recruits for its Natural Language group. We are looking for people who will fit well into the group on a permanent basis, rather than for a specific project. A good computer science or linguistics background is important, as are excellent programming skills. Top quality computer scientists without any previous experience of Natural Language Processing are encouraged to apply, as well as people with experience in the area. For more information about these openings, and about Canon Research Centre Europe in general, our URL is http://www.cre.canon.co.uk/. Our work ranges from long-term basic research to solving specific problems quickly, and from interactive spoken dialogue systems to large-scale text translation. We are currently embarking on embedding our Natural Language software in realistic hardware platforms. Skills/expertise relevant to this area would be useful. Creativity and a flair for innovative work are essential. Canon Research Centre Europe has been on the University of Surrey Research Park since 1988. We doubt that you would be disappointed by salary, equipment or working environment. Our recruitment policy is one of equal opportunity. Please note that you need to have the right to work in Britain. If you are not a citizen of one of the member states of the European Union, please check whether you are eligible before applying. If you are interested, please mail a detailed CV to nljob@canon.co.uk Plain text is preferred, but other formats (PostScript, LaTeX, Framemaker, troff, etc.) are acceptable. Alternatively, you can send a paper copy to: Kazuko Cooper (NL) Canon Research Centre Europe 20 Alan Turing Road Surrey Research Park Guildford GU2 5YF, UK tel: +44-1483-448844 fax: +44-1483-448845 There is no specific deadline for applications for these positions, which will be processed as they arrive until suitable people have been found. We expect to be hiring about 3 more people over the course of 1995. If you need more information, please get in touch with Tom Wachtel (wachtel@canon.co.uk). ====================================================================== From: Nicolas Nicolov Subject: Comp Ling Summer School - Bulgaria - Contemp. Topics in CL International Summer School "CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS" ____________________________________________________________________ 9 - 13 Sept 1995 Tzigov Chark, Bulgaria DATES: 9 - 13 Sept 1995 (arrival 8 Sept) LOCATION: Tzigov Chark is a beautiful resort in the Rhodope Mountains surrounding the Batak Lake. Tzigov Chark is 150km from Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME: A. Joshi (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Lexicalized tree-adjoining grammars J. Tsujii (UMIST, Manchester, UK) Knowledge acquisition from corpora J. Haller (IAI, Saarbrucken, Germany) Unification-based Machine Translation J. Schutz (IAI, Saarbrucken, Germany) Language Engineering J. Hutchins (University of East Anglia, UK) Machine translation: history, current status and possible future developments W. von Hahn (University of Hamburg, Germany) Knowledge-based Machine Aided Translation Y. Matsumoto (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan) Lexical knowledge acquisition A. Ramsey (University College Dublin) Interpretation in context Key-sun Choi (KAIST, Taejon, Korea) English-to-Korean Machine Translation R. Delmonte (University of Venice, Italy) Referring expressions in sublanguages C. Martin-Vide (Universidad Rovira i Virgilli, Tarragona, Spain) Mathematical Linguistics: its relevance for Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science Other speakers are expected to confirm their participation. A more complete list will be given in the next announcement. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Ruslan Mitkov IAI Saarbruecken/Institute of Mathematics, Sofia Manfred Kudlek University of Hamburg, Germany Michael Zock LIMSI, Orsay, France Nikolai Nikolov Incoma, Bulgaria Victoria Arranz CCL, UMIST, Manchester, UK Nicolas Nicolov Dept. of AI, University of Edinburgh, UK SUMMER SCHOOL INFORMATION: For further information please contact: Nicolas Nicolov or Prof. Ruslan Mitkov RELATED EVENTS: The summer school participants are also invited to take part in the Int. Conference "RECENT ADVANCES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING", which will take place immediately after the summer school in Velingrad, 20 km from Tzigov Chark. Further information about the conference can be obtained from: Nicolas Nicolov or Prof. R. Mitkov or you can have a look at the conference WWW page at URL: http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/misc/NLP_Conf.html NB Prof. Ruslan Mitkov's NEW email is: NEXT ANOUNCEMENT: A more complete tutorial program, information about registration fees, and accommodation will be posted in due time. ====================================================================== From: Mark Kantrowitz Subject: Searchable NLG bibliography Take a look at http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Ai/nlg.html Alf-Christian Achilles has set up a bibliography server using Mark Kantrowitz's NLG bib as a kernel. The search engine is neat. Try it! ====================================================================== From: stede@faw.uni-ulm.de (Manfred Stede) Subject: Lexicalization survey available Manfred Stede: "Lexicalization in natural language generation: a survey" Artificial Intelligence Review 8:309-336, 1995 Not absolutely up-to-date, because reviewing took a long time, but maybe it's useful anyway. If interested in a reprint or a postscript file, send mail to stede@faw.uni-ulm.de ----- cheers, Manfred ====================================================================== eof ======================================================================