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CoNLL-2014
Eighteenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
June 26-27, 2014
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First Call for Papers
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CoNLL is the yearly conference organized by SIGNLL (the ACL Special
Interest Group on Natural Language Learning). This year, CoNLL will be
collocated with ACL 2014 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The shared task
of CoNLL will be Grammatical Error Correction, see details below.
Important Dates
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* Paper submission deadline: March 14, 2014, 23:59 EST (GMT-6)
* Notification of acceptance: April 21, 2014
* Camera-ready copy deadline: May 4, 2014
* Conference: June 26-27, 2014 (straight after ACL 2014)
Topics
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CoNLL is an international conference for research on natural language
learning. We invite the submission of papers on all aspects of
computational approaches to natural language learning, including, but
not limited to:
* Development and empirical evaluation of machine learning methods
applied to any natural language or speech processing task in
supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised settings
(e.g. structured prediction, graphical models, deep learning,
relational learning, reinforcement learning, etc.).
* Theoretical analyses of learning-based approaches to natural
language processing.
* Computational models of human language acquisition, language
evolution and language change.
Special Topic of Interest: Machine Reading
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For this edition of CoNLL, we particularly solicit papers that focus
on machine reading, "the automatic, unsupervised understanding of
text" (Etzioni et al. 2006), which involves processes such as text
analysis, knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, learning,
inference, optimization, reasoning, and information fusion. The field
is evolving rapidly thanks to the research performed in projects such
as TextRunner (Banko, Cafarella, and Etzioni 2007), the Watson system
of IBM (Ferrucci et al. 2010), ReVerb (Fader et al 2011), or NELL
(Mitchel 2010) and the DARPA Machine Reading program (Strassel et
al. 2010). We solicit papers related to all aspects of Machine Reading
with special interest in papers that report research on inference.
Best Paper Award
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As in recent CoNLL conferences, we are delighted to announce that
Microsoft will sponsor a Best Paper Award for the authors of the
highest quality paper. The most important aspects in judging the
quality of a paper will be: originality, innovativeness, relevance,
and impact of the presented research.
Main Session Submission Details
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A paper submitted to CoNLL-2014 must describe original, unpublished
work. Submit a full paper by March 14, 2014, 23:59 EST (GMT-6). Papers
may have up to eight (8) pages of content, with two (2) additional
pages of references, and will be presented orally or as a poster
presentation as determined by the program committee. The decisions as
to which papers will be presented orally and which as poster
presentations will be based on the nature rather than on the quality
of the work. There will be no distinction in the proceedings between
full papers presented orally and those presented as poster
presentations.
We require the use of the ACL 2014 LaTeX style files or Microsoft Word
Style files tailored for this year's conference. Papers must conform
to the official ACL 2014 style guidelines. Authors who are unable to
use these style files or submit a PDF file electronically should
contact the program co-chairs.
Authors may also optionally submit a second document containing
supporting information such as proofs or algorithmic
details. Reviewers will have access to the supporting information and
may refer to it at their discretion. Any information that is critical
to understanding the paper should be included within the paper itself.
Since reviewing will be blind, the paper should not include the
authors' names and affiliations, and there should be no
self-references that reveal the authors' identity. In the submission
form, you will be asked for the following information: paper title,
authors' names, affiliations, and email addresses, contact author's
email address, a list of keywords, abstract of no more than 300 words,
and information on whether the paper has been or will be
simultaneously submitted to other conferences (and if so which
conferences). The contact author of an accepted paper under multiple
submission will need to promptly inform the program co-chairs whether
he or she intends the accepted paper to appear in CoNLL-2014. A paper
that is submitted to be included in CoNLL-2014 must be withdrawn from
other conferences.
Authors of accepted submissions are to produce a final paper to be
published in the proceedings of the conference, which will be
available at the conference for participants, and distributed
afterwards by ACL. Final papers must also follow the ACL 2014 style
and should have at most 8 pages of content plus at most 2 extra pages
for references only. At least one author must register for the
conference and present the paper. Please do not submit a paper if you
do not plan to attend the conference.
As in previous years, CoNLL-2014 will include a shared task which is
organized by a separate committee. The details of the shared task are
included in this CFP (see below). Please note the different submission
details and deadlines for the shared task.
Conference Chairs
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Roser Morante
CLiPS
University of Antwerp
Scott Wen-tau Yih
Microsoft Research
Contact email: conll2014 [at] conll.org
Shared Task: Grammatical Error Correction
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CoNLL 2014 will continue the CoNLL tradition of having a high profile
shared task in natural language processing. This year's shared task
will be grammatical error correction, a continuation of the CoNLL
shared task in 2013. A participating system in this shared task is
given short English essays written by non-native speakers of
English. The system detects the grammatical errors present in the
input essays, and returns the corrected essays. The shared task in
2014 will require a participating system to correct all errors present
in an essay (i.e., not restricted to just the five error types
required in 2013). The organization of the CoNLL 2014 shared task will
be led by Hwee Tou Ng at the National University of Singapore.
Important Dates
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November 22, 2013: announcement of shared task
December 5, 2013: set up of shared task website
December 27, 2013: registration begins and release of training set and scorer
January 22, 2014: registration deadline
March 16, 2014: test set available
March 19, 2014: systems' outputs collected
March 26, 2014: system results due to participants
April 2, 2014: shared task system papers due
April 11, 2014: reviews due
April 14, 2014: notification of acceptance
April 21, 2014: camera ready version of shared task system papers due
June 26-27, 2014: CoNLL-2014 conference (Baltimore, Maryland, USA)
Contact
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Questions about the CoNLL 2014 shared task can be sent to conll14st [at] gmail.com.
SIGNLL
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See http://www.signll.org and http://www.signll.org/conll for more information
about SIGNLL and CoNLL.