Multiword Expressions: Identification, Interpretation, Disambiguation
and Applications (MWE 2009)
Workshop at the ACL/IJCNLP 2009 Conference (Singapore), 06 August 2009
The workshop is endorsed by the ACL Special Interest Group on the
Lexicon (SIGLEX)
The link to MWE 2009 is the following:
http://multiword.sourceforge.net/PHITE.php?sitesig=CONF&page=CONF_40_MWE...
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A short description of the workshop, the topics as well as submission
information, important dates and the members of the Programme
Committee are presented below.
Description
Multi-Word Expressions (MWEs) are an indispensable part of
natural languages and appear steadily on a daily basis, both new and
already existing but paraphrased. Thus, the automated processing of
MWEs is important for many natural language applications. The meaning
of MWEs can be either motivated or arbitrary. Native speakers master
most MWEs, while learners of a foreign language have to learn MWEs by
heart. The interpretation of MWEs poses a major challenge for
automated analysis helping both groups easily master MWEs.
The growing interest in MWEs in the NLP community has led to
many specialized workshops held every year since 2001 in conjunction
with ACL, EACL and LREC; there have been also two recent special
issues on MWEs published by leading journals: the International
Journal of Language Resources and Evaluation, and the Journal of
Computer Speech and Language.
As a result of the overall progress in the field, the time
has come to move from basic preliminary research to actual
applications in real-world NLP tasks. Following this trend, the
LREC-MWE'08 focused on gathering resources and creating a common
repository in order to rank MWE candidates and facilitate further
research.
Call for papers
In MWE'09 we are interested in the overall process of dealing
with MWEs, asking for original research related (but not limited) to
the following four fundamental topics.
Workshop topics
(1) Identification. Identification is a major problem
for MWEs. The MWE identification task is to determine whether a MWE is
used non-compositionally (figuratively) or compositionally (literally)
in a particular context. The identification of MWEs by automated means
is a difficult task, as it does not suffice to store the MWE into a
dictionary database. Rule-based (morphosyntactic rules) and/or
statistical approaches may be needed to identify MWEs in context.
(2) Interpretation. Semantic interpretation of MWEs,
particularly noun compounds and determinerless prepositional phrases,
is the task of determining the implicit semantic relation holding
between the MWE's sub-components. This specific area is inviting
research on (linguistically) identifying the semantic relations (SRs)
and automatic SR interpretation in MWEs. The relation inventories used
can be of different granularity and dependent on the particular type
of MWE construction. In some cases, MWE's semantics can be also
specified in terms of a suitable paraphrase.
(3) Disambiguation. Disambiguation (Semantic
classification) is the task of specifying the semantics of MWEs based
on an inventory of semantic relations. It tends to presuppose the
ability to classify the (degree of) compositionality of MWEs and
applies only to compositional MWEs. The aim is to specify the
semantics of MWEs in terms of predefined semantic categories, e.g., in
WordNet.
(4) Applications. Identifying MWEs in context and
understanding their syntax and semantics is important for many natural
language applications, including but not limited to question
answering, machine translation, information retrieval, information
extraction, and textual entailment. Still, despite the growing
research interest, there are not enough successful applications in
real NLP problems, which we believe is the key for the advancement of
the field.
Submission information
Submissions must describe substantial, original, and
unpublished work. Submissions will be judged on correctness,
originality, technical strength, significance and relevance to the
conference, and interest to the attendees. Full papers may consist of
up to eight (8) pages in total (references icluded) and will be
presented orally. The deadline for paper submission is May 1, 2009
(GMT + 8).
The official style files for ACL/IJCNLP 2009 are
available at: http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/main/authors/stylefiles/.
The workshop submissions should use the same formatting guidelines.
Format
Full paper submissions should follow the two-column
format of ACL-IJCNLP 2009 proceedings without exceeding eight (8)
pages including references. We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX
style files or Microsoft Word Style files tailored for this year's
conference, which will be available on the conference website. All
submissions must conform to the official ACL-IJCNLP 2009 style
guidelines to be announced in the conference website and they must be
electronic in PDF.
As the reviewing will be blind, the paper must not
include the authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore,
self-references that reveal the author's identity, e.g., "We
previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...", must be avoided. Instead, use
citations such as "Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...". Papers
that do not conform to these requirements will be rejected without
review.
Important dates
Paper submission deadline May 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance of papers June 1, 2009
Camera-ready copies due June 14, 2009
ACL-IJCNLP 2009 Workshops August 6-7, 2009
Programme committee
* Inaki Alegria, University of the Basque Country (Spain)
* Timothy Baldwin, Stanford University (USA); University of
Melbourne (Australia)
* Colin Bannard, Max Planck Institute (Germany)
* Francis Bond, National Institute of Information and
Communications Technology (Japan)
* Gael Dias, Beira Interior University (Portugal)
* Ulrich Heid, Stuttgart University (Germany)
* Stefan Evert, University of Osnabrueck (Germany)
* Afsaneh Fazly,University of Toronto (Canada)
* Nicole Gregoire,University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
* Roxana Girju,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
* Kyo Kageura, University of Tokyo (Japan)
* Brigitte Krenn, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial
Intelligence (Austria)
* Eric Laporte, University of Marne-la-Vall?e (France)
* Rosamund Moon, University of Birmingham (UK)
* Diana McCarthy, University of Sussex (UK)
* Jan Odijk, University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
* Stephan Oepen, Stanford University (USA); University of Oslo
(Norway)
* Darren Pearce, London Knowledge Lab (UK)
* Pavel Pecina, Charles University (Czech Republic)
* Scott Piao, University of Manchester (UK)
* Violeta Seretan, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
* Suzanne Stevenson, University of Toronto (Canada)
* Stan Szpakowicz, University of Ottawa (Canada)
* Beata Trawinski, University of Tuebingen (Germany)
* Peter Turney, National Research Council of Canada (Canada)
* Kiyoko Uchiyama, Keio University (Japan)
* Begona Villada Moiron, University of Groningen (The Netherlands)
* Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
(Brazil)
Workshop chairs
* Dimitra Anastasiou, Localisation Research Centre, Limerick
University, Ireland
* Chikara Hashimoto, National Institute of Information and
Communications Technology, Japan
* Preslav Nakov, National University of Singapore, Singapore
* Su Nam Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia
Contact
For any inquiries regarding the workshop please contact
Dimitra Anastasiou (dimitra [at] d-anastasiou.com).