IFIP Working Group 12.1 on Knowledge Representation IFIP Working Group 12.4 on Natural Language SIGLEX - ACL Special Interest Group on the Lexicon Call for Papers Workshop on Roles for Knowledge Representation in Natural Language TRENTO, ITALY, 31 May - 1 June, 1998 In conjunction with the 6th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR'98) TRENTO, ITALY, JUNE 2-5, 1998 http://www.kr.org/kr/kr98/ Aims of the workshop This workshop is aimed at reinvigorating the historical connection between research in Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Representation. The goal is to encourage communication between the two fields, in hopes of stimulating KR research on problems of interest to the NLP community, communication of KR discoveries from the NLP community to KR researchers, and identification of existing KR techniques that may help solve problems faced by NLP researchers. List of topics In view of the "big picture" orientation of the workshop, submissions are sought which specifically address issues of relevance to both communities. These might include, but are not limited to: * Identification of linguistic knowledge representation problems for which good solutions are not known * Evaluation of existing knowledge representation techniques on linguistic problems, including insightful negative evaluations * Identification of challenge problems that would tax existing algorithms and methodologies, including scalability issues. * Discussion of knowledge representation issues inherent in defined classes of natural language processing problems As an example of what we have in mind, and with the goal of encouraging a lively discussion, we have keynote addresses by Graeme Hirst and James Allen. Graeme will be speaking on whether or not the AI formalizations of context as an undefined primitive has any relevance natural language processing. He argues that "any theory of context in natural language must take the special nature of natural language into account and cannot regard context simply as an undefined primitive. I show that there is no such thing as a coherent theory of context simpliciter -- context pure and simple -- and that context in natural language is not the same kind of thing as context in KR. In natural language, context is constructed by the speaker and the interpreter, and both have considerable discretion in so doing. Therefore, a formalization based on pre-defined contexts and pre-defined `lifting axioms' cannot account for how context is used in real-world language." Submissions discussing the current state of the art in broad areas of knowledge representation technology (e.g., constraint satisfaction, uncertainty, defaults) are also encouraged; these should avoid the temptation to focus on the authors' work, and should keep the "interdisciplinary" nature of the target audience firmly in mind. Requirements for submission Submitted papers must be unpublished, but may overlap with papers currently under review for conferences that will occur after the workshop (including KR'98). Papers that have been or will be presented at small workshops/symposia whose proceedings are available only to attendees may be submitted. Format for submission. Each submission will undergo multiple reviews. Each submission should include a title page containing the title, author(s), affiliation(s), submitting author's mailing address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address, as well as an abstract (no more than 200 words) and keywords indicating the topic areas listed above that best describe the contribution. Submissions must be at most 10 pages, excluding the title page and the bibliography, with a maximum of 38 lines per page and an average of 75 characters per line (corresponding to the LaTeX article-style, 12pt) using LaTeX or Microsoft Word. Any correspondence will be addressed to the first author (unless otherwise specified). For hardcopy submission, please send 5 copies of the paper, to the following address: Martha Palmer IFIP KR/NLP-98 Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, 3401 Walnut Street, Suite 400A Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228, USA. For electronic submission, please send postscript files to mpalmer@cis.upenn.edu Authors will be responsible for preparation of camera-ready copies of final versions of accepted papers, conforming to a uniform format to be specified later. SCHEDULE February 16, 1998 Papers due March 16, 1998 Results sent to the authors April 23, 1998 Camera ready copy due Sunday 31 May - Monday 1 June, 1988 Workshop ORGANISING COMMITTEE Martha Palmer Harry Bunt IRCS, University of Pennsylvania ITK, Tilburg University 3401 Walnut Street, Suite 400A P.O. Box 90153 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228, 5000 LE Tilburg, the Netherlands USA David Etherington Fabio Pianesi University of Oregon IRST, Eugene, OR, USA Trento, Italy Program Committee: James Allen, University of Rochester, USA Claire Gardent, Universitaet des Saarlandes, Germany Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, Canada Bob Mercer, University of Western Ontario Bernard Nebel, Universit"at Ulm, Germany Sergei Nirenburg, New Mexico State University, USA James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University, USA Patrick St Dizier, Universite' Paul Sabatier, France Len Schubert, University of Rochester, USA Mark Steedman, University of Pennsylvania, USA Rich Thomason, University of Pittsburgh, USA Bonnie Webber, University of Pennsylvania, USA