2016Q3 Reports: SIGPARSE

SIGPARSE is ACL's special interest group on natural language parsing. The main purposes of the SIG are: to promote interest in the parsing of natural languages; to provide a means of disseminating information about natural language parsing; to ensure the continuity of the biennial 'International Conferences on Parsing Technologies' (IWPT); and to endorse relevant meetings and workshops, such as SPMRL (Statistical Parsing of Morphologically Rich Languages).

The last IWPT (14th in the serie) was successfully held in Bilbao, Spain (July 22-24th, 2015). The local arrangements committee was based at the University of the Basque Country, and was chaired by Koldo Gojenola. John Carroll (Sussex) was general chair for the conference, and the program chair is Stephan Oepen (Oslo). The conference was co-located with the 6th Workshop on Statistical Parsing of Morphologically Rich Languages (SPMRL 2015).

The next edition of IWPT will take place in 2017.

An election for the new board of SIGPARSE was run during Spring 2016, with the following results:

• Eric Villemonte de la Clergerie (INRIA, President)
• Stephan Oepen (Univ. of Oslo, Secretary)
• Yuji Matsumoto (NAIST - Information Officer),
• Kenji Sagae (USC - Information Officer)
• Anders Søgaard (Univ. Copenhagen - Information Officer).

The next election should be organized in January 2019.

The new board would like to thank John Carroll (Sussex) for his great job as president of SIGPARSE and chair of last IWPT.