Subject: LREC WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT
From: Simone Saint Laurent <lrec@ilc.pi.cnr.it>
To: elsnet-list@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 11:32:21 +0100

*We apologize for multiple copies*

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)