Post-Coling workshop, Geneva Enhancing and using electronic dictionaries Michael Zock (Limsi, CNRS) & Patrick St. Dizier (Irit, CNRS) Introduction A dictionary is a vital component of any natural language processing system. Its modern, digital form has considerable potential, especially if it is extended and built in a way compatible with the needs and habits of the average language user. There are many ways to make an electronic dictionary useful for people in their daily tasks of processing language. One could assist 1. reading and writing: adding a transliterator and a morphological generator/parser to a dictionary would put the needed information at the distance of a mouse click. Imagine someone trying to look up the meaning (or translation) of a word in a script he can=92t read. 2. language learning: combining dictionaries with a parametrizable flashcard system and a goal-driven exercice generator could help the memorization and automation of words and basic syntactic patterns. In such a system choosing a goal would trigger syntactic templates, filling the latter with words would yield (simple) sentences. 3. lexical access (navigation): structuring the dictionary in a similar way as the human mind, i.e. building an associative network akin to WordNet, but with many more links in particular at the syntagmatic axis, could assist the writer not only in finding new ideas (brainstorming), but also the word he is looking for. Within this framework, word access amounts to entering and navigating in a huge, associative network. To build such a tool one could extract associations from an encyclopedia, label and add them as links to a resource like WordNet. As one can see, there are numerous ways to enhance dictionaries. While the new hardware offers many, sometimes surprising opportunities for novel uses, seizing them requires some rethinking. This is the goal of this one-day workshop. In particular, we=92d like to discuss interesting extensions and enhancements of electronic dictionaries. For example, one could consider merging different, thesaurus-like dictionaries and see what kind of conceptual and navigational aids might be added to support the language user: what are his needs, what information is he looking for? Actually, a focus shift might be necessary to move from the data (content and size of the dictionary) to their organisation and access. As, what is a huge dictionary good for, if one cannot find the word one is looking for? Target audience The aim of this workshop is to bring together leading researchers involved in the building of electronic dictionaries to discuss modifications of existing resources in line with the users=92 needs (i.e. how to capitalize on the advantages of the digital form). Given the breadth of the questions, we welcome reports on work from many perspectives, including, but not limited, to linguistics, computer science, psycholinguistics, language learning, and ergonomics. We request that each contribution addresses computational aspects. Topics We would like to invite papers addressing any of the following issues : type of information to be stored in the dictionary representation and structuring (indexing) of the data; management, visualization and useability of the data; access (aids for navigation, interface, strategies); acquisition of lexical data (corpus); possibilities for editing entries (annotation, updating); integration (combination of the dictionary with other ressources, writer=92s workbench); uses of dictionaries by people (learning/teaching; writing) and by machines (NLP). Submission instructions Papers should be original, hence report on previously unpublished work. Papers simultaneously submitted to other conferences should reflect this fact on the title page. As the review process will not be blind, papers should contain the names and affiliations of authors. Submissions must be electronic only, and should consist of full papers of max. 8 pages (inclusive of references, tables, figures and equations). Project notes and position papers should not exceed 4 pages. Authors should follow the COLING 2004 formating guidelines, available at: http://www.is= sco.unige.ch/coling2004/coling2004downloads.html. All submissions should be made by email to the following address zock limsi.fr. They should consist of a single PDF file. Before submitting your document, please verify that all non-standard fonts are correctly embedded in your PDF file (you can do this by disabling the "Use Local Font" option when viewing your document with Adobe's Reader). =46ormating requirements for the final version of the papers will be posted as soon as they become available. Important dates * Deadline for workshop paper submissions: 1st May 2004 * Notification of workshop paper acceptance: 1st June 2004 * Deadline for camera-ready workshop papers: 15th June 2004 * Workshop Date: 29th August 2004 Organising Committee: * Michael Zock (Limsi-CNRS, Orsay, France) chair * Patrick Saint Dizier (IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse, France) Program Committee: * Antonietta Alonge (University of Perugia, Italy) * Christian Boitet (GETA, Grenoble, France) * Nicoletta Calzolari (ILC-CNR, Pisa, Italy) * Christiane Fellbaum (University of Princeton, USA) * Graeme Hirst (University of Toronto, Canada) * Mathieu Mangeot-Nagata (NII, Tokyo) * Rada Mihalcea (University of North Texas, USA) * Alain Polgu=E8re (OLST, University of Montreal, Canada) * James Pustejovsky (University of Brandeis, USA) * Gilles S=E9rasset (GETA, Grenoble, France) * Patrick Saint Dizier (IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse, France) * Takenobu Tokunaga (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan) * Dan Tufis (RACAI, Bucharest, Roumania) * Jean V=E9ronis (University of Aix en Provence, France) * Piek Vossen (Irion Technologies, Delft, The Netherlands) * Leo Wanner (University of Stuttgart, Germany) * Michael Zock (Limsi-CNRS, France) Contact For any queries please contact Michael Zock: zock limsi.fr --