Note: Due to large number of requests, the submission deadline has been
postponed one month.

           New submission deadline: 28th of February 2005.
                                                              

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"Questions and Answers: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives"

A Special Issue of the Journal of Applied Logic
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/15708683)


We have been invited by the "Journal of Applied Logic" to prepare a
Special Issue stimulated by the 2nd CoLogNET-ELSNET Symposium on
"Questions and Answers: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives".


BACKGROUND:

The symposium was the second of three devoted to the exploration of the
common ground between the "Logic and Natural Language Processing" Area
of CoLogNET (Network of Excellence in Computational Logic,
http://www.colognet.org/) and ELSNET (Network of Excellence in Human
Language Technologies, http://www.elsnet.org/). It addressed both the
logical foundations underlying QA, and technological implications for
question answering systems.

TOPIC OF INTEREST FOR THE SPECIAL ISSUE:

Based on the successful symposium experience, we invite papers on
both theoretical issues involved in question answering or practical
issues involved in querying systems for integrated structured domains
(like databases, ontologies,..) as well as for open domain sources
(like web-based documents). A (non-exclusive) list of relevant
issues includes:

 - Questions: linguistic analysis of interrogatives
 - Theoretical and practical approaches to question semantics
 - Presuppositions/implicatures in questions and how to deal with them
 - Interpretation of questions in context
 - Query interpretation and query extension in IR
 - Questions that do not look like questions
 - Paraphrasing questions for answer detection,
 - Answering how and why questions
 - Questions/answers that relate multiple events
 - Comparing and/or evaluating answer candidates
 - Answering comparison questions
 - Contextual binding of candidate answers -- i.e., temporal and
     spatial dependencies,
 - Quantified and conditional questions
 - Quantified and conditional answers  

SUBMISSION DETAILS

The final version of accepted papers has to follow the standard
layout guidelines of the "Journal of Applied Logic". Instructions
for authors and the latex style files are available from

http://www.inf.unibz.it/~bernardi/qajal_style

Although not mandatory, we suggest to use the corresponding style
files from that web-page also for your initial submission. The
issue aims at high quality papers with a length around 20 to max. 30
pages. Please send your submission in postscript or pdf no later
than January 31st, 2005 to

                                bernardi@inf.unbiz.it.

Please, write "QA special issue: Submission" in the subject.

Notice that all papers will be refereed to ensure their suitability
for journal publication.

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2005
Notification Deadline: March 18, 2005
Camera Ready Deadline: May 1, 2005


GUEST EDITORS of the Special Issue

Raffaella Bernardi (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano) &
Bonnie Webber (University of Edinburgh)