No Subject
The Eighteenth National Conference
on Artificial Intelligence
July 28 - 29, 2002
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Semantic Web Meets Language Resources
CALL FOR PAPERS
Researchers in AI are deeply involved in Semantic Web development,
working on such topics as standardized ontologies, formal foundations
for ontologies, new representation languages and the adaptation of
old languages to the web.
At the same time, researchers in computational linguistics are
developing means to adequately represent linguistically annotated
data, with the goal of developing formats and standards that will
eventually enable full exploitation of the information represented.
They are increasingly turning toward resources developed within the
XML framework such as the Resource Definition Framework (RDF) to
model the information in ways that will allow for maximal flexibility
and extensibility. This demands, in turn, development of abstract
models that capture the properties of linguistic annotations at
various levels of specificity, and development of ontologies to
represent them. The need to develop and standardize representation
formats for linguistic data and its annotations has grown to the
point where a new working group has been formed within the
International Standards Organization (ISO) to oversee this activity.
However, much of this activity is going on with only superficial
knowledge of developments in the framework of the Semantic Web and
the potential for accessing and exploiting information that it is
intended to eventually allow.
This workshop is intended to bring together researchers in AI who are
working on the Semantic Web and those involved in the development of
standards for linguistic annotation, to enable an exchange of
information and ideas. This is a critical point at which to bring
together these two groups, who typically have little interaction.
Those involved in developing language resources need to gain a deeper
understanding of the potential of and requirements for the Semantic
Web and standardized ontologies, and AI researchers, who are working
on a general model, will gain insight by considering an application
of their work to actual content and, more generally, by considering
the needs for a specific domain that requires complex representation
mechanisms and sophisticated means to exploit the information.
The workshop will consist of two invited talks providing an overview
of current work in the areas of Semantic Web development, on the one
hand, and language resource representation, on the other. This will
be followed by 4-5 presentations detailing work in either or both
areas and, where possible, outlining needs that may be met by the
other community. A panel discussion and open discussion in the
afternoon will attempt to identify areas and means for collaboration
and continued development.
We invite short proposals for workshop presentations, addressing any
of the following topics:
representing meaning in natural languages using ontological support
and/or practical applications of such ontological-semantic work;
problems for representing linguistic data, including the need to
accommodate potentially different theoretical approaches in a common
framework, inadequacies of current means to represent linguistic
annotations, and requirements for "annotation ontologies";
potential for exploiting inferencing capabilities etc. in
linguistically annotated data, and the representation requirements
that will enable this;
techniques for combining statistical and non-statistical approaches
to ontology development.
Proposals should be approximately 2 pages in length, providing an
overview of the work to be described. For papers addressing work
primarily in the area of ontology development or primarily concerned
with linguistic resources, a clear statement of the relevance and/or
applicability of work in the other domain should be provided.
The Program Committee will select 4-5 proposals for presentation at
the workshop, with the overall goal of assuring a balance in the
presentation topics. Authors of accepted papers will then be invited
to submit a full paper of approximately 10 pages in length, which
will be included in a special issue of a major international journal.
Submissions
Please send proposals electronically in ASCII, postscript, pdf, or
word rtf format to aaai02-ws@cs.vassar.edu.
Submission deadline: March 15, 2002
Notification date: April 19, 2002
Final date for camera-ready copies to organizers: May 3, 2002
Workshop Organizers
Nancy Ide
Department of Computer Science
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-0520
Tel: (+1 845) 437 5988
Fax: (+1 845) 437 7498
Email: ide@cs.vassar.edu
Chris Welty
Department of Computer Science
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-0462
Tel: (+1 845) 437 5992
Fax: (+1 845) 437 7498
Email: welty@cs.vassar.edu
Program Commitee
Paul Buitelaar, DFKI, Saarbrucken, Germany
Nicoletta Calzolari, ILC-CNR, Italy
Christiane Fellbaum, Princeton University, USA
Aldo Gangemi, ITBM-CNR, Italy
Nicola Guarino, LADSEB-CNR, Italy
Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto, Canada
Atanas Kiryakov, SIRMA Ontotext Lab, Bulgaria
Sergei Nirenburg, New Mexico State University, USA
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University, USA
Laurent Romary, LORIA/INRIA, France
--
Christopher A. Welty http://www.cs.vassar.edu/faculty/welty/
Vassar College Computer Science Dept. Voice: (845) 437-5992
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0462 Fax: (845) 437-7498