#CFP Applied Natural Language Processing May 18 – 20, 2015, FL, US

Special Track at FLAIRS-28, Hollywood, Florida USA

Organizers:
·         Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University (fkeshtkar@semo.edu)
·         Vasile Rus, University of Memphis, vrus@memphis.edu

Full Title: Applied Natural Language Processing

Date:                           May 18 – 20, 2015
Call Deadline: November 17, 2015
Location:                     Hollywood, Florida, USA
Web Site:                    http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/fkeshtkar/anlpflairs-2015/
Field(s):                       Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science
Email:                          Fazel Keshtkar (fkeshtkar@semo.edu)
                                  Vasile Rus (vrus@memphis.edu)
                     

Applied Natural Language Processing

Special Track at
The 28th International FLAIRS Conference
In cooperation with the American Association for Artificial Intelligence
Hollywood, Florida, USA
May 18 – 20, 2015
Paper submission deadline: November 17, 2014.
Notifications: January 19, 2015.
Camera ready version due: February 23, 2015.

All accepted papers will be published in FLAIRS proceedings by the AAAI.

Call for Papers

What is ANLP?
The track on Applied Natural Language Processing is a forum for researchers working in natural language processing (NLP)/computational linguistics(CL) and related areas. The rapid pace of development of online materials, most of them in textual form or text combined with other media (visual, audio), has led to a revived interest for tools capable to understand, organize and mine those materials. Novel human-computer interfaces, for instance talking heads, can benefit from language understanding and generation techniques with big impact on user satisfaction. Moreover, language can facilitate human-computer interaction for the handicapped (no typing needed) and elderly leading to an ever increasing user base for computer systems.

What is the GOAL of the track?
The goal of the ANLP track is to inform researchers as to current project and studies that identify, investigate, and (begin to) resolve issues that relate to human/computer language interaction.

Who might be interested?
Papers and contributions on traditional basic and applied language processing issues are welcome as well as novel challenges to the NLP/CL community: bioNLP, spam filtering, security, multilingual processing, learning environments, multimodal communication, etc. We also encourage papers in information retrieval, speech processing and machine learning that present novel approaches that can benefit from or have an impact on NLP/CL.

What kind of studies will be of interest?
We invite highly original papers that describe work in, but not limited to, the following areas:
1. NL-based representations and knowledge systems
2. Lexical Semantics
3. Syntax
4. Co-reference Resolution
5. Word Sense Disambiguation
6. Text Cohesion and Coherence
7. Dialogue Management Systems
8. Language Generation
9. Language Models
10. Human Computer Interfaces – in particular multimodal human-computer communication
and language as the only acceptable human-computer communication channel for
handicapped and elderly
11. NL in Learning Environments
12. Machine Learning applied to NL problems
13. Multilingual Processing
14. Standardization, Language Resources, Corpora Building and Annotation Languages
15. Semantic Web, Ontologies, Reasoning
16. Semantic Similarity Metrics
17. Applications: Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, Summarization, Intelligent
Tutoring, Question Answering, Information Extraction and others
18. Other related topics

Note: We invite original papers (i.e. work not previously submitted, in submission, or to be submitted to another conference during the reviewing process).

Submission Guidelines
Interested authors should format their papers according to AAAI formatting guidelines. The papers should be original work (i.e., not submitted, in submission, or submitted to another conference while in review). Papers should not exceed 6 pages (4 pages for a poster) and are due by November 17, 2014. For FLAIRS-28, the 2015 conference, the reviewing is a double blind process. Fake author names and affiliations must be used on submitted papers to provide double-blind reviewing. Papers must be submitted as PDF through the EasyChair conference system, which can be accessed through the main conference web site (http://www.flairs-28.info/). Note: do not use a fake name for your EasyChair login – your EasyChair account information is hidden from reviewers. Authors should indicate the [your track name] special track for submissions. The proceedings of FLAIRS will be published by the AAAI. Authors of accepted papers will be required to sign a form transferring copyright of their contribution to AAAI. FLAIRS requires that there be at least one full author registration per paper.

Please, check the website http://www.flairs-28.info/ for further information.

Conference Proceedings
Papers will be refereed and all accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings, which will be published by AAAI Press.

Organizing Committee
Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University (fkeshtkar@semo.edu)
Vasile Rus, University of Memphis, vrus@memphis.edu

Current Program Committee
Sivaji Bandyopadhyay, Jadavpur University, India
Lee Becker, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Cosmin Adrian Bejan, University of Southern California, USA
Eric Bell, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
Chutima Boonthum, Hampton University, USA
Justin Brunelle, Old Dominion University, USA
Nicoletta Calzolari, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Italy
Andrea Corradini, University of Southern Denmark, DK
Asif Ekbal, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, India
Stefano Faralli, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
Anna Feldman, Montclair State University, USA
Katherine M Forbes Riley, University of Pittsburg, USA
Christian Hempelmann, RiverGlass Inc. and Purdue University, USA
Verena Henrich, University of Tubingen, Germany
Diana Inkpen, University of Ottawa, Canada
Pamela Jordan, University of Pittsburg, USA
Christel Kemke, University of Manitoboa, Canada
Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University, USA
Travis Lamkin, University of Memphis, USA
Mihai Lintean, University of Memphis, USA
Xiaofei Lu, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Mehdi Manshadi, University of Rochester, USA
Phil McCarthy, University of Memphis, USA
Manish Mehta, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Cristina Nicolae, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Nobal Niraula, University of Memphis, USA
Constantin Orasan, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Shiyan Ou, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Gilles Richard, Paul Sabatier University, France
Vasile Rus University of Memphis, USA
Hansen A. Schwartz, University of Central Florida, USA
Svetlana Stoyanchev, The Open University, UK
Rene Venegas, Pontificia University, Chile
Nina Wacholder, Rutgers University, USA
Michael Wiegand, Saarland University, Germany
Alistair Willis, The Open University, UK
Soon Ae Chun, City University of New York, USA
Fatiha Sadat, UQAM, Canada

Further Information
Questions regarding the Applied Natural Language Processing Special Track should be addressed to the track co-chairs:
Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University, fkeshtkar@semo.edu
Vasile Rus, University of Memphis, vrus@memphis.edu

Questions regarding Special Tracks should be addressed to Chair Zdravko Markov at MarkovZ@mail.ccsu.edu
Conference Chair:
 Chutima Boonthum-Denecke, Hampton University, USA (chutima.boonthum@gmail.com)
Program Co-Chairs:
William (Bill) Eberle, Tennessee Technological University, USA
 Ingrid Russell, University of Hartford, USA (irussell@hartford.edu

Special Tracks Coordinator:
Zdravko Markov, Central Connecticut State University, USA (markovz@ccsu.edu)

Invited Speakers
To be announced

Conference Web Sites
Paper submission site: follow the link for submissions at http://www.flairs-28.info/
FLAIRS-28 conference web page: http://www.flairs-28.info/
Florida AI Research Society (FLAIRS): http://www.flairs.com

……..
Fazel Keshtkar, PhD., Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Southeast Missouri State University
Voice: 573-651-2208
Fax: 573-651-2791
email: fkeshtkar@semo.edu
Web: http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/fkeshtkar/index.html

3rd workshop on #NLP for computer-assisted language learning #deadline Sept 25

3rd workshop on NLP for computer-assisted language learning

SLTC workshop, November, 13, 2014, Uppsala, Sweden

2nd Call for papers

Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL), i.e., the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Speech Technologies (ST) in language learning applications, is a rapidly developing area which has started to attract increased attention from the Language Technology (LT) community. ICALL research has generated a number of successful applications for alleviating a variety of (mechanical) tasks that teachers face daily in their work, for example grammar or spelling error marking, essay grading, preparation of text questions for reading activities, creating tests and exercises, etc.

However, reusing NLP/ST methods or tools (developed for other than pedagogical purposes) in pedagogical applications is not always pedagogically justifiable since they need to be adapted to the educational tasks, e.g. readability measures for legal texts adapted to the second language learning context. Thus, LT researchers who intend to re-use their algorithms and techniques in CALL applications need new datasets, specifically designed corpora, databases, etc. to fine-tune their tools for new target groups – the design and compilation of which are both critical for achieving good results and time-consuming.

There are other challenges that the area of NLP-based CALL faces: re-use and sharing of existing NLP/ST components, copyright issues, standardization of pedagogical framework, lack of collaboration with end-users – to name just a few. Probably the most significant challenge is to make sure that the research results reach actual end-users in the form of tools which can become a part of the educational process, and which are both easy of use and have a pedagogically sound basis.

This workshop aims to bring together (computational) linguists involved in research aiming at integrating NLP/ST in CALL systems and exploring the theoretical and methodological issues arising in this connection, with the purpose to share experiences, achievements and setbacks, and to discuss potential ways of addressing the challenges that need to be overcome.

This year we welcome papers

that describe research directly aimed at ICALL
that demonstrate actual or discuss potential use of existing NLP/ST tools or resources for language learning
that describe ongoing development of resources and tools with potential usage in ICALL, either directly in interactive applications, or indirectly in materials, application or curriculum development, e.g. collecting and annotating learner corpora; developing tools and algorithms for readability analysis, selecting optimal corpus examples, etc.
that discuss challenges and/or research agendas for ICALL
we are also interested in software demonstrations
We especially invite submissions describing the above-mentioned themes for the Nordic languages.

Submission information

We are using Nodalida 2013 template for the workshop this year. Authors are invited to submit papers between 7 and 14 pages of content, excluding title, abstract, references and author affiliations. Only pdf files will be accepted. Submissions will be managed through the electronic conference management system EasyChair. Final camera-ready versions of accepted papers will be given an additional page to address reviewer comments.

Papers should describe original unpublished work or work-in-progress. Every paper will be reviewed by at least 2 members of the program committee. As reviewing will be blind, please ensure that papers are anonymous. Self-references that reveal the author’s identity, e.g., “We previously showed (Smith, 1991) …”, should be avoided. Instead, use citations such as “Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) …”. Submissions will be judged on appropriateness, clarity, originality/innovativeness, correctness/soundness, meaningful comparison, significance and impact of ideas or results. Accepted papers will be published in a NEALT Proceeding Series and, additionally, made available through ACL anthology.

Please note that NoDaLiDa 2013 format adopts a single-column, smaller page format, optimized for on-screen reading. In terms of actual word counts, the above page numbers correspond to approximately 4-8 pages, in a ‘classic’, two-column conference proceedings layout.

Important dates:

June, 16: first call for papers
August, 8: EasyChair opens for submissions
August, 14: second call for papers
September, 14: final call for papers
September, 25: paper submission deadline, via EasyChair
October, 16: notification of acceptance
October, 30: camera-ready papers for publication. You are also required to submit the NEALT transfer of copyright agreement (signed at least by the corresponding author and scanned) with your final submission.
November, 13, 9.00-12.00: workshop date

Invited speaker

We are happy to announce that our invited speaker will be

Prof. Detmar Meurers, University of Tübingen, Germany

Program committee:

Lars Ahrenberg, Linköping University, Sweden
Lars Borin, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Antonio Branco, University of Lisboa, Portugal
Simon Dobnik, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Robert Eklund, Linköping University, Sweden
Katarina Heimann Mühlenbock, DART, Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset, Göteborg, Sweden
Thomas Francois, UCLouvain, Belgium
Arne Jönsson, Linköping University, Sweden
Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Ola Knutsson, Stockholm University, Sweden
Chris Koniaris, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Peter Ljunglöf, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Hrafn Loftsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland
Montse Maritxalar, University of the Basque country, Spain
Detmar Meurers, University of Tübingen, Germany
Martí Quixal, The Universty of Texas at Austin, US
Mathias Schulze, University of Waterloo, Canada
Joel Tetreault, Yahoo! Labs, US
Trond Trosterud, Universitetet i Tromsø, Norway
Cornelia Tschichold, Swansea University, UK
Francis Tyers, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Elena Volodina, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Workshop organizers

Elena Volodina, Språkbanken, Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg; elena dot volodina at svenska dot gu dot se (Organizing chair)
Lars Borin, Språkbanken, Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg; lars dot borin at svenska dot gu dot se
Ildikó Pilán, Språkbanken, Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg; ildiko dot pilan at svenska dot gu dot se

For all inquiries, please email Elena Volodina

Automated grammatical error correction in essays

Information from the Discussion thread from the Linked in Natural Language Processing Group

-Shared Task at CoNLL 2013 and 2014, both of them on grammatical error correction:

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~nlp/conll13st.htmlhttp://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~nlp/conll14st.html

-This year the task focused in all kind of errors. Here you can download the proceedings:

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~nlp/conll14st/conll14st-book.pdf

-Claudia Leacock et al’s survey, ‘Automated Grammatical Error Detection for Language Learners’.

http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00275ED1V01Y201006HLT009