Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
NL-KR Digest Volume 14 No. 50
NL-KR Digest Wed Aug 16 10:01:49 PDT 1995 Volume 14 No. 50
Today's Topics:
CFP: Wkshp on Spoken Language Gen. and Mm. Info., Nov 95, Darmstadt
Announcement: LDC Corpus - Air Travel Information System Data
Position: Natural Language Developer - NYNEX
Program: Summer School on Comp Ling, Sep 95, Tzigov Chark
CFP: ILPS'95 Wkshp on Logic Progr. Environments, Dec 95, Portland
* * *
Subcriptions: listserv-style administrative requests to
nl-kr-request@ai.sunnyside.com.
Submissions, policy, questions: nl-kr@ai.sunnyside.com
To speed up processing of your submission write to
listserv@ai.sunnyside.com with the message:
GET nl-kr style
Back issues:
FTP: ai.sunnyside.com:/pub/nl-kr/Vxx/Nyyy
/pub/nl-kr/Vxx/INDEX
Gopher: ai.sunnyside.com, Port 70, in directory /pub/nl-kr
Email: write to LISTSERV@AI.SUNNYSIDE.COM, omit subject, mail command:
GET nl-kr nl-kr_file_list
Web: http://ai.sunnyside.com/pub/nl-kr
Editors:
Al Whaley (al@ai.sunnyside.com) and
Chris Welty (weltyc@sigart.acm.org).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 11:30:58 +0200
From: "Dr. John Bateman" <bateman@darmstadt.gmd.de>
To: nlpeople@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, siggen-members@indigo.cs.bgu.ac.il,
Subject: CFP: Wkshp on Spoken Language Gen. and Mm. Info., Nov 95, Darmstadt
2ND `SPEAK!' WORKSHOP: SPEECH GENERATION IN MULTIMODAL INFORMATION
SYSTEMS AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
2nd-3rd November 1995
GMD/IPSI, Darmstadt, Germany
* * * **** CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS * * * ****
This workshop aims to bring together researchers, developers, and
potential producers and marketers of multimodal information systems in
order to consider the role of *spoken language synthesis* in such
systems. Not only do we need to be able to produce spoken language
appropriately---including effective control of intonation---but also
we need to know in which practical contexts spoken language is most
beneficial. This requires a dialogue between those providing spoken
natural language technology and those considering the practical use of
multimodal information systems.
The workshop will consist of paper presentations and practical
demonstrations, as well as a roundtable discussion on the best
strategies for pursuing the practical application of spoken language
synthesis technology in information systems.
Suggested Topic Areas/Themes include, but are not limited to:
* functional control of intonation in synthesized speech
* use of speech in intelligent interfaces for information systems
* integration of speech into automatic query systems
* cooperative integration of speech with text generation for
information systems
* evaluation strategies for information systems involving speech
synthesis
* applications for information systems with spoken language output
capabilities
* practical requirements for information systems with spoken language
capabilities.
Potential participants are invited to submit short statements of
interest indicating whether they would be interested in presenting a
paper, offering a system demonstration, participating in the round
table discussion, or simply attending. Statements of interest and
extended abstracts (max. 7 pages) should be sent by 1st. October by
e-mail to: `bateman@gmd.de' or by post to: John A. Bateman, GMD/IPSI,
Dolivostr. 15, D-64293 Darmstadt, Germany. Extended abstracts will
be made available at the workshop.
During the workshop current results and demonstrations of the EU
Copernicus Program Project `Speak!' will also be given (see
attachment).
-----------------------------------------
Project Information:
The SPEAK! Project:
Speech Generation in Multimodal Information Systems
"SPEAK!" is a European Union funded project (COPERNICUS '93 Project
No. 10393) whose aim is to embed spoken natural language synthesis
technology with sophisticated user interfaces in order to improve
access to information systems.
Multimedia technology and knowledge-based text processing enhance the
development of new types of information systems which not only offer
references or full-text documents to the user but also provide access
to images, graphics, audio and video documents. This diversification
of the in formation offered has to be supported by easy-to-use
multimodal user interfaces, which are capable of presenting each type
of information item in a way that it can be perceived and processed
effectively by the user.
Users can easily process simultaneously the graphical medium of
information presentation and the linguistic medium. The separation of
mode is also quite appropriate for the different functionalities of
the main graphical interaction and the supportive meta-dialogue
carried out linguistically. We believe, therefore, that a substantial
improvement in both functionality and user acceptance is to be
achieved by the integration of spoken languages capabilities.
However, text-to-speech devices commercially available today produce
speech that sounds unnatural and that is hard to listen to. High
quality synthesized speech that sounds acceptable to humans demands
appropriate intonation patterns. The effective control of intonation
requires synthesizing from meanings, rather than word sequences, and
requires understanding of the functions of intonation. In the domain
of sophisticated human-machine interfaces, we can make use of the
increasing tendency to design such interfaces as independent agents
that themselves engage in an interactive dialogue (both graphical and
linguistic) with their users. Such agents need to maintain models of
their discourses, their users, and their communicative goals.
The SPEAK! project, which was launched recently as a cooperation
between the Speech Research Technology Laboratory of the TECHNICAL
UNIVERSITY OF BUDAPEST and the TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF DARMSTADT (in
cooperation with GMD-IPSI), aims at developing such an interface for a
multimedia retrieval system. At IPSI, the departments KOMET (natural
language generation) and MIND (information retrieval dialogues)
contribute to this project.
The project is to construct a proof-of-concept prototype of a
multimodal information system combining graphical and spoken language
output in a variety of languages. The work involves four supporting
goals: first, to advance the state of the art in the domains of speech
synthesis, spoken text generation, and graphical interface design;
second, to provide enabling technology for higher functionality
information systems that are more appropriate for general public use;
third, to significantly improve the public and industrial acceptance
of speech synthesis in general and the Hungarian text-to-speech
technology elaborated within the project in particular; and, fourth,
to act as a focusing point for speech work in Hungary.
Contact points:
GMD/IPSI, Darmstadt: John Bateman
e-mail: bateman@gmd.de
fax: +49/6151-869-818
tel: +49/6151-869-826
TU-Budapest: G'eza N'emeth
e-mail: NEMETH@ttt-202.ttt.bme.hu
fax: +36/1-463-3107
tel: +36/1-463 2401
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To: nl-kr@snyside1.sunnyside.com (NL-KR)
Subject: Announcement: LDC Corpus - Air Travel Information System Data
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 15:32:12 EDT
From: LDC Office <ldc@unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Announcing a NEW RELEASE from the
LINGUISTIC DATA CONSORTIUM:
Air Travel Information System
ATIS3 TEST DATA
This set of discs contains a corpus of speech and natural language
data collected under the auspices of the Advanced Research Projects
Agency Spoken Language Systems (ARPA-SLS) technology development
program. The corpus, which contains data in the Air Travel Information
Services (ATIS) domain, was designed by the ARPA-SLS Multi-site Atis
Data COllection Working (MADCOW) group and was collected by five sites
at locations across the U.S.:
BBN Systems & Technologies, Cambridge, MA
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Boston, MA
National Institute for Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
SRI International, Menlo Park, CA
The corpora on this set of discs is part of the third phase of
collection of ATIS data (ATIS3) and comprises the development test
(NIST Speech Disc 17-4.2) and evaluation test material (NIST Speech
Disc 17-5.1) used in the December 1994 ARPA SLS Benchmark Tests. As
in the previous ATIS corpora, the speech contained in this corpus was
elicited by presenting subjects with various hypothetical travel
planning scenarios to solve. The resulting spontaneous spoken queries
were recorded as the subjects interacted with partially or completely
automated ATIS systems to solve the scenarios. Note that the ATIS3
training data is available on NIST Speech Discs 17-1.1-17-3.1.
The recorded speech has been transcribed and annotated with
categorizations and canonical reference answers. All of the
utterances on these discs have been recorded using a close-talking,
noise-cancelling head-mounted Sennheiser microphone. For some
subjects, secondary (noisier) microphone data was recorded
simultaneously as well.
These discs also contain the ATIS3 46 city/52 airport relational
database, a revised Principles of Interpretation, and test
implementation and scoring instructions as well as other general
documentation.
The ATIS3 corpus has been verified, collated, documented, and produced
on CD-ROM by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) in cooperation with MADCOW and distributed by the Linguistic
Data Consortium (LDC).
Further information about the LDC and its available corpora can be
accessed on the Linguistic Data Consortium WWW Home Page at URL
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ldc. Information is also available via ftp
at ftp.cis.upenn.edu under pub/ldc; for ftp access, please use
"anonymous" as your login name, and give your email address when asked
for password.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To: comp-ai-nlang-know-rep@uunet.uu.net
From: pitrelli@eros.nynexst.com (John Pitrelli)
Subject: Position: Natural Language Developer - NYNEX
Date: 15 Aug 95 17:28:11
Position for
Experienced Natural Language Understanding System Developer
The Speech Services Technology Group at NYNEX Science & Technology has an
opening for a developer with significant experience in building Natural
Language Understanding systems.
The Speech Services Technology Group designs and deploys state-of-
the-art interactive speech recognition and language understanding
systems. Our spoken language systems combine a recognition framework
with natural language and discourse modelling capabilities to provide
the uninitiated caller with an elegant, powerful, and easy-to-use
interface to various applications, using a standard telephone.
Opportunities for applying this technology to multimedia and to text
processing may also arise.
Qualifications are:
o At least an MS in Computer Science, Linguistics, or a related field.
o At least 3 years experience, either commercial or academic, directly
involved in the development of robust natural language systems.
o Significant software development experience, most preferably in C or C++.
o Experience with relevant statistical techniques.
o Familiarity with related fields, such as speech recognition, signal
processing, relevant real-time programming issues, and user interface
design for speech & language systems, are all plusses.
o Experience and maturity in conceptualization, software design, and
software engineering.
o Ability to work in a cohesive team.
o Strong motivation to excel.
Work will involve combining probabilistic training with knowledge-based
approaches to achieve the most robust performance possible. Since this is
a software development effort, candidates should anticipate working in a
team environment, sharing their experience and expertise with other
developers from different backgrounds.
If you feel you are qualified and interested, please send your resume to:
Hong C. Leung
Speech Recognition & Language Understanding Services Laboratory
NYNEX Science & Technology, Inc.
500 Westchester Avenue
White Plains, NY 10604
E-mail: hcl@nynexst.com
Fax: 914-644-2211
You may send your resume as plain e-mail, PostScript, paper mail, or
as a fax.
NYNEX is the regional Bell operating company for the northeastern
United States. Science & Technology is the research and development
organization of NYNEX. We are located about 30 minutes north of New
York City, in suburban Westchester County.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 01:03:52 +0000
From: Nicolas Nicolov <nicolas@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Program: Summer School on Comp Ling, Sep 95, Tzigov Chark
To: nlpeople@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, siggen-members@black.bgu.ac.il,
* Please post:
International Summer School
"CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS"
____________________________________________________________________
Tzigov Chark, Bulgaria
DATES: 9 - 12 Sept 1995 (arrival 8 Sept)
LOCATION:
Tzigov Chark is a beautiful resort in the Rhodope Mountains on the
shore of Batak Lake. Tzigov Chark is 150km from Sofia, the capital of
Bulgaria.
PROGRAMME:
9 SEPT
9.15-13.00 J. Tsujii (UMIST, Manchester, UK)
Knowledge acquisition from corpora
15.00-18.15 J. Hutchins (University of East Anglia, UK)
Machine translation: history, current status and
possible future developments
10 SEPT
9.00-12.45 A. Joshi (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Lexicalized grammars
15.00-16.00 Panel discussion: What is language engineering?
Panelists: J. Tsujii, Y. Matsumoto, J. Schuetz,
K.S.Choi, Z. Yusoff, C.M. Vide, R. Mitkov
16.30-18.15 Zaharin Yusoff (University Sains Malaysia)
Language Engineering in South-East Asia
11 SEPT
9.00-12.45 Y. Matsumoto (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
Lexical knowledge acquisition
14.15-16.00 Key-sun Choi (KAIST, Taejon, Korea)
English-to-Korean Machine Translation
16.15-18.00 R. Mitkov (IAI Saarbruecken/University of Hamburg/
Institute of Mathematics-Sofia)
Anaphora resolution in Natural Language Processing and
Machine Translation
12 SEPT
9.00-11.45 A. Ramsey (UMIST, Manchester, UK)
Interpretation in context
12.00-13.00 M. Kudlek (University of Hamburg)
Mathematical models of pronouns
14.30-16.30 W.von Hahn (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Knowledge-based Machine Aided Translation
16.45-18.30 C. Martin-Vide (Universidad Rovira i Virgilli,Tarragona,Spain)
Grammar systems
SUMMER SCHOOL INFORMATION:
For further information please contact:
Prof. Ruslan Mitkov <ruslan@iai.uni-sb.de> or
Nicolas Nicolov <nicolas@edinburgh.aisb.ac.uk>
ACCOMMODATION:
The summer school will take place in Hotel "Orpheus", Tzigov Chark,
which accomodates up to 50 participants. We have chosen a small and
cosy conference hotel to create a better and friendlier working and
social environment: however this implies restrictions on the
availability of single rooms and participants will be normally offered
to share 2-bed rooms. Those interested in attending the summer school
are encouraged to register as early as possible.
LOCATION AND TRANSPORTATION:
Tzigov Chark is situated on the shore of the beautiful Batak Lake in
the Western Rhodope mountains and is 150km from Sofia, the capital
of Bulgaria. The local organisers will provide a daily shuttle bus/
conference taxi from Sofia airport to the summer school location
at an inexpensive rate. Sofia is easily accessible by plane from most
major European cities (e.g. daily flights or several flights per week
from London, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich, Vienna and other European
cities). There are also direct flights to Sofia from North America
(New York, Toronto) and Asia (Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur).
In order to enable the local organisers to plan the shuttle service
efficiently, please contact Victoria Arranz <victoria@ccl.umist.ac.uk>
with details about your journey (arrival/departure time and date) at
least 2 weeks before you leave for the summer school.
RELATED EVENTS:
The summer school participants are also invited to take part in the
Int. Conference "RECENT ADVANCES IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING",
which will take place immediately after the summer school in the
same hotel. Further information about the conference can be
obtained from: Prof. R. Mitkov <ruslan@iai.uni-sb.de> or
Nicolas Nicolov <nicolas@aisb.edinburgh.ac.uk> or you can have a
look at the conference WWW page at URL:
http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/misc/NLP_Conf.html
REGISTRATION FOR THE SUMMER SCHOOL:
Kindly note that the bank processing charges are at the expense of the
participants.
International Summer School
"CONTEMPORARY TOPICS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS"
____________________________________________________________________
REGISTRATION FORM
Name: ________________________________________________
Affiliation: ________________________________________________
Address: ________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
Telephone: ______________________________
Fax: ______________________________
e-mail: ______________________________
Registration Fee . . . . . : ___________ 150 USD for industrial participants
110 USD for academic staff
80 USD for students
Accommodation + half-board : ___________
(30 USD per day per person)
Specify days - Sept 1995 . : [ ] 8, [ ] 9, [ ] 10, [ ] 11, [ ] 12, [ ] 13
=========================== ===========
TOTAL Amount in USD sent . : ___________
Date of bank transfer. . . : 1995
Bank transfer reference No : ___________
To bank account (tick one) :
[ ] BANK . . . .: AMEX
ACCOUNT NO .: 00710 756 of First Private Bank PLS, Bulgaria
INSTRUCTIONS: for onward credit to First Private Bank,
Shoumen branch - Nikolai Nikolov
Account in USD: 95079620 4 1 00 2560 1 4
Address of recipient: Nikolai Nikolov
Incoma, P.O. Box 20
9700 Shumen, BULGARIA
Tel: +359-54 5 69 48
*OR*
[ ] BANK . . . .: CITIBANK New York
ACCOUNT NO .: 36015 992 of First Private Bank PLS, Bulgaria
INSTRUCTIONS: for onward credit to First Private Bank,
Shoumen branch - Nikolai Nikolov
Account in USD: 95079620 4 1 00 2560 1 4
Address of recipient: Nikolai Nikolov
Incoma, P.O. Box 20
9700 Shumen, BULGARIA
Tel: +359-54 5 69 48
____________________________________________________________________
Send your registration forms to:
Nicolas Nicolov
Dept of Artificial Intelligence
University of Edinburgh
80 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1HN, UK
Fax : +44-131 650 6516
Phone : +44-131 650 2727
E-mail: nicolas@aisb.edinburgh.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: fromherz@parc.xerox.com (Markus Fromherz)
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 12:31:33 PDT
To: kb@doc.ic.ac.uk (Krysia Broda), kdb@elis.rug.ac.be, keplicz@mimuw.edu.pl,
Subject: CFP: ILPS'95 Wkshp on Logic Progr. Environments, Dec 95, Portland
CALL FOR PAPERS
Seventh Workshop on Logic Programming Environments
------- -------- -- ----- ----------- ------------
December 8, 1995
Portland, Oregon, USA
Held in conjunction with ILPS'95.
Description:
------------
Logic programming environments have come a long way from the
original text-based paradigm. Much work has been done on the creation
of better logic programming environments. Furthermore, the
characteristics of logic programming languages often motivate
innovative approaches and techniques in the areas of user environments
and programming tools. New logic programming languages, such as
constraint and concurrent languages, also motivate new programming
environments.
The Seventh Workshop on Logic Programming Environments will provide
a forum for researchers and logic programming system developers to
exchange ideas and results on all aspects of environments for logic
programming. This includes work related to design issues, new
techniques and tools, and the solution of noteworthy problems arising,
for example, from new logic programming languages or interesting
application areas. Both state-of-the-practice and state-of-the-art
presentations are welcome. Specific topic areas relevant to the
workshop include, but are not be limited to:
* user interfaces and human engineering
e.g., support of program composition, execution control,
intelligent or enhanced debugging, embedded windowing
and graphics capabilities, execution visualization
* software development tools
e.g., program composition aids, automatic transformation
or induction facilities, code partitioning and module schemes,
debugging aids
* provisions for new paradigms
e.g., special characteristics or techniques for dealing with
logic programming languages other than Prolog, such as parallel
(LP) languages, constraint-based (LP) languages, languages
merging logical and functional paradigms, visual languages, etc.
* interfacing to other language system tools
e.g., interfacing to partial evaluators, source-to-source
transformers, global analyzers, abstract interpreters in the
underlying language system
* interfacing to external systems
e.g., foreign-language interfaces, data-base and file system
interfaces, interfaces to external windowing and graphics
systems
* provisions for component integration
e.g., interpreters, compilers, and solvers as component software
The workshop will be informal in nature, allowing ample time for
questions and discussions as well as presentations. However, all
presentations will be subject to a review process. Registration for
the workshop will be open to all ILPS'95 attendees. Duration of the
workshop is dependent upon the level of participation received, but is
expected to be one day. A copy of the proceedings will be made
available to all participants.
This workshop follows the 6th Workshop on Logic Programming
Environments, which was held in conjunction with ICLP'94.
Submissions:
------------
Submissions are invited for presentation during the workshop. All
presentations will be subject to peer review. The bulk of
presentations is expected to be research papers, though posters and
software demonstrations (either live or on video tape) are also
welcome.
Papers submitted for presentation are restricted to 6 pages in
length. Authors are encouraged to write in the style of a "position
paper", and also identify whether state-of-the-practice or
state-of-the-art work is being described.
Participants wishing to make poster presentations or give
demonstrations must submit an abstract describing the work. A note
should also be included discussing any equipment or presentation
needs.
The following guidelines apply to either type of submission:
* The title, author name(s), affiliation(s), and address(es) (both
postal and electronic), and date must be clearly given on the first
page.
* The actual submission should be in machine-readable form (either
self-contained LaTeX source document or PostScript file), and
submitted electronically (e.g., by electronic mail). If it is not
possible for authors to submit electronically, hard-copy
submissions can be accommodated.
* Submissions should be sent to
wlpe-95@parc.xerox.com
Authors may wish to compress and uuencode large PostScript files
before sending them to increase the probably of their safe and
timely delivery ("compress" and "uuencode" are the standard
UNIX facilities by those names, modern mail systems also include
these features).
If submission by e-mail is impossible, three copies of the
submission should be sent by post to Markus Fromherz at the address
below.
* Participants can expect confirmation shortly after submission
that their paper or abstract has been received and is printable.
(Please allow a few days in certain circumstances.)
Otherwise, they should send an electronic mail message describing
the situation to
fromherz@parc.xerox.com
or
kusalik@cs.usask.ca
Final paper versions will also be required in machine-readable form,
with electronic submission.
Dates:
------
Deadline for submissions: Sept. 11, 1995
Notification of review results: Oct. 16, 1995
Final version of papers due: Nov. 13, 1995
Workshop Dec. 8, 1995
We welcome your input:
----------------------
Suggestions or proposals for panel discussions in focused areas
are also invited.
Organizers:
-----------
Dr. Markus Fromherz
Xerox PARC
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
U.S.A.
tel: (415) 812 4273 fax: (415) 812-4334
email: fromherz@parc.xerox.com
Dr. Anthony J. Kusalik
Department of Computational Science
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
S7N 0W0 Canada
tel: (306) 966 4904 fax: (306) 966 4884
email: kusalik@cs.usask.ca
Dr. Marc Kirschenbaum
Dept. of Math. and Comp. Sci.
John Carroll University
Cleveland, OH 44118
U.S.A.
tel: (216) 397-4684
email: kirsch@jcvaxa.jcu.edu
Pertinent Network Information:
------------------------------
Public information (e.g., this call-for-participation, and
eventually the workshop program) is (will be) available by WWW at
http://www.cs.usask.ca/projects/envlop/wlpe-95.html
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
