######################################################################## WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS ACL2007 - A Broader Perspective on Multiword Expressions Endorsed by the ACL Special Interest Group on the Lexicon (SIGLEX) Date: June, 28 (AM), 2007 Location: Prague, Czech Republic Workshop web page: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Nicole.Gregoire/personal/ACL07-MWE/ ######################################################################## In recent years, the NLP community has increasingly become aware of the problems that multiword expressions (MWEs) pose. A considerable amount of research has been conducted in this area, some within large research projects dedicated to MWEs. Although progress has been made especially in the area of multiword extraction, a number of fundamental questions remain unanswered. Following up workshops on various aspects of MWEs at previous ACL conferences, we want to address these questions in this year's MWE workshop: - Is it sufficient to use purely statistical methods for the extraction of MWEs from corpora, or is it necessary to harness human knowledge and linguistic insights? - Is fully automatic MWE extraction feasible, or will manual validation always be required? - What is the nature of MWEs, and how can they be defined formally? - To what extent can definitions and extraction procedures be generalised to other languages, other text types and other types of MWEs? - Can and should we distinguish subtypes of MWEs for NLP applications? In addition to these fundamental issues, we want to address the practical question of what is needed for a successful treatment of MWEs in NLP: - What properties should be specified for MWEs or subtypes of MWEs in the lexicon? - Can we detect these properties automatically with sufficient accuracy? - How can existing grammars be adapted in order to deal better with MWEs? - What role do the semantics of MWEs play in NLP applications and can they be determined automatically from large corpora? We therefore solicit papers describing linguistically motivated approaches to MWEs, comparative studies across languages or different subtypes of MWEs, and the treatment of MWEs in NLP applications. This includes (but is not limited to) research on: - Linguistic, Empirical and Cognitive Properties of MWEs: research into the definitions and characteristic properties of MWEs and the impact that such information has on NLP applications. - Classes of MWEs: investigating classes (or subtypes) of MWEs and the extent to which computational techniques transfer to different classes and different languages. - Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Theories of MWEs: combining the computational treatment of a class of MWEs with a solid linguistic and/or psycholinguistic analysis. SUBMISSION INFORMATION Submissions should follow the two-column format of ACL proceedings and should not exceed eight (8) pages, including references. As reviewing will be blind, the paper should not include the authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-citations and other references (e.g. to projects, corpora, or software) that could reveal the author's identity should be avoided. For example, instead of "We previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...", write "Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...". Submission will be electronic, using the workshop's START paper submission webpage (http://www.softconf.com/acl07/ACL07-WS6/submit.html). The only accepted format for submitted papers is Adobe PDF. The papers must be submitted no later than 7pm US Eastern time March 26, 2007 (23:59 GMT March 26, 2007). Papers submitted after that time will not be reviewed. WORKSHOP FORMAT This is a half-day workshop. The accepted papers will be presented as 20-minute talks followed by a 10-minute discussion. IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission deadline: March 26, 2007 Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2007 Camera ready papers due: May 9, 2007 Workshop date: June 28 (AM), 2007 PROGRAM COMITTEE I–aki Alegria (University of the Basque Country) Timothy Baldwin (Stanford University, USA; University of Melbourne, Australia) Colin Bannard (Max Planck Institute, Germany) Francis Bond (NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan) Beatrice Daille (Nantes University, France) Gael Dias (Beira Interior University, Portugal) James Dowdall (University of Sussex, UK) Uli Heid (Stuttgart University, Germany) Kyo Kageura (University of Tokyo, Japan) Anna Korhonen (University of Cambridge, UK) Brigitte Krenn (OFAI, Vienna, Austria) Dan Moldovan (University of Texas, USA) Rosamund Moon (University of Birmingham, UK) Diana McCarthy (University of Sussex, UK) Eric Laporte (University of Marne-la-Vallee, France) Preslov Nakov (University of California, USA) Jan Odijk (University of Utrecht, The Netherlands) Stephan Oepen (Stanford University, USA; University of Oslo, Norway) Darren Pearce (University of Sussex, UK) Scott Piao (University of Lancaster, UK) Violeta Seretan (University of Geneva, Switzerland) Suzanne Stevenson (University of Tuebingen, Germany) Beata Trawinski (University of Toronto, Canada) Kiyoko Uchiyama (Keio University, Japan) Ruben Urizar (University of the Basque Country) Bego–a Villada Moir—n (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) Aline Villavicencio (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) WORKSHOP CHAIRS Nicole GrŽgoire University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Stefan Evert University of Osnabrueck, Germany Su Nam Kim University of Melbourne, Australia CONTACT For any inquiries regarding the workshop please contact Nicole GrŽgoire (Nicole.Gregoire@let.uu.nl).