CICLing-2001

Second International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics

February 18 to 24, 2001
Mexico City, Mexico

(new) Photos of the conf!

 

Publication: Springer LNCS
Deadline: October 1, posters: November 5
Invited speakers: Graeme Hirst, Ruslan Mitkov, and Sylvain Kahane
Excursions: Ancient pyramids, Monarch butterflies, great cave, and more

 

Please distribute: Plain text version of CFP, Poster

 

 

This conference is the second CICLing event. The past CICLing-2000 was very successful, according to the comments of the participants. One of the messages we have received after the event was the following: "Everything was just great! Super-hyper-ultra-well done!" wrote Igor Mel'cuk, a world-recognized linguist, the author of the Meaning-Text Theory. A book of selected papers of CICLing-2000 is in press by a prestigious publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica.

We consider the following factors to define our identity:

   General interest. The conference covers nearly all topics related to computational linguistics. This makes it attractive for people from different areas, and leads to vivid and interesting discussions and exchange of opinions.

   Informal atmosphere. It is intended for a small group of serious specialists, not more than 50 thoroughly selected participants. This allows for informal and friendly atmosphere, more resembling a party of friends than an official procedure. Of course, serious preparation stands behind this ease.

   Excellent excursions. Mexico is a wonderful country rich with culture, history, and nature. The conference is intended for young and active people – young in their soul, not necessarily age, –  explorers in their nature, both in science and in life. Our cultural program brings the participants to unique marvels of history and nature hidden from the usual tourists.

   Relief of frosts. In the middle of February frosts, the participants from Europe and North America can enjoy bright warm sun under the shadow of palms.

The conference is held at the Center for Computer Research (CIC) of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), Mexico. The IPN is one of the largest universities in the world with over 120,000 students. The CIC is a relatively new school devoted to the cutting edge research in all areas of science related to computers, both in software and hardware. The conference is organized by the Natural Language Processing laboratory of CIC.

In general, we are interested in whatever helps, or will help eventually, or might help, computers meaningfully process language data.

The conference is intended to the exchange of opinions between the scientists working in different areas of the growing field of computational linguistics and intelligent text processing. Our idea is to get a bird's-eye view of the state of art in computational linguistics and its applications.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited by, the following topics, as long as the topic is presented in computer-related or formal description aspects:

Computational linguistics research:

   Computational linguistic theories and formalisms

   Representation of linguistic knowledge

   Morphology

   Syntax

   Semantics

   Discourse models

   Text generation

   Statistical methods in computational linguistics

   Corpus linguistics

   Dictionaries for text processing and generation

Intelligent text processing and applications:

   Document classification and search

   Information retrieval

   Text mining and Information extraction

   Automatic summarization

   Thematic segmentation of text

   Natural language interfaces

In particular, papers on the following narrower themes are especially welcomed:

   HPSG

   Meaning-Text theory

   Generative Linguistics

   Ambiguity resolution

   Subcategorization

   Anaphora resolution

Naturally, we welcome the works on processing any language, not necessarily English, though usually major languages are of more general interest. Note: when describing phenomena of languages other than English, be sure to make your discussion understandable for people not familiar with this particular language.

On the other hand, we are not interested in the topics not related to computers processing language. For example, we are not interested in the following types of submissions, which would find much more appreciative audience at some another conf or in an appropriate journal:

   No: Purely linguistic, dialectological, historic, etc. discussions of particular languages, without relation to their computer processing, e.g.: Evolution of personal names in classic Latin.

   No: Purely computer topics not related to meaningful language processing, e.g.: Unicode character table for Mayan hieroglyphs, or: Pentium-V processors with 64 MB cache make syntactic analyzers work faster.

   No: Application of tools traditionally developed within computational linguistics, to non-linguistic-related tasks, e.g.: Generating of hardware test sequences with stochastic grammars.

If you are not sure whether your particular topic is of interest, please do not hesitate to ask. You can also have a look at the past CICLing-2000 program to get an idea of our interests.

Posters

The papers can be submitted either as full papers or as poster abstracts. The authors of poster abstracts are to present their works as posters or demos. A 2-page poster abstracts will be published in the Proceedings.Whenever possible, the abstract should give references to Internet sites where more detailed info on the work can be found.

Though we expect that generally the poster presenters will be local students, there will be no preference neither to local authors nor to students. The authors of some of the rejected full papers will be recommended by the Committee to re-submit their work as a poster abstract. There will be 5 days to write their 2-page abstract after rejection of their full paper.

Publication format: All accepted poster abstracts will be published in the Proceedings by Springer-Verlag and thus must be prepared in the required format. In particular, they must not have the word “Abstract” in their title nor subtitle, and must be supplied with an abstract according to Springer requirements, with the exception that the abstract should be very short (say, not more than 5 lines).

Poster/demo format: You will be given approximately 2 square meters of vertical space to attach your material. If you have some special requirements, please let us know. The following common wisdom improves your presentation:

For a poster

   Arrange individual pages vertically, in columns, from top to bottom. Horizontal arrangement of pages makes the readers to zigzag when reading your material.

   Use large font, at least 20 pt, and much larger for headings. Note that you probably will explain your poster to several or many people at the same time.

   Have detailed and additional material handy, though do not attach it together with your main material. It is a good idea to prepare some sufficient number of handouts.

For a demo

   Have a working program, not a PowerPoint presentation (which should constitute your poster instead).

   Prepare some plan of your demonstration, including some examples tested in advance.

   Prepare all necessary input files in advance, even small. On the other hand, give the users a chance to test their own examples and to play with your program’s options and features.

   If possible, have handy some floppies or CDs with your program and documentation, that you can give out to the participants. Clearly indicate your name and email on these disks. Indicate the web page where more info can be found.

Presentation: The Poster/Demo presentations will be organized during short breaks and after the end of the regular talks, i.e., each day from 18 to 20 pm. On the first day of the conf, the Poster/Demo session from 18 to 20 pm will be combined with the Welcome party.

Registration: There are no special rules for registration of poster presenters. The local students presenting a poster will, according to the general rule, have a free access to the conf, while will not be given a copy of the Proceedings unless they pay the registration fee. All other poster presenters will have to register accordingly.

Demos

During the same poster/demo sessions, all participants will be able to demonstrate the material related to their talks or posters.

Demo platforms provided by the organizers: PC with Windows 95/98, CD and floppy drives; no significant space on the disk is guaranteed. Those who need Windows NT on PC, Solaris on Sun, Linux on PC, Mac, etc., should contact the Committee in advance. The same about significant disk space, Internet access, or any special hardware or software requirements.

Even if you do not have any special requirements, we encourage you to let us know for how much hours you will probably need a demo computer.

Publication

All accepted papers and poster abstracts will be published in CICLing-2001 Proceedings volume edited by Springer-Verlag in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (listed here).

The full papers should not exceed 14 pages, though we encourage you to keep it shorter (as short as possible - but not shorter).

Poster abstracts should not exceed 2 pages and should, if possible, contain references to Internet sites where more detail on the work can be found. Otherwise the format of the poster abstracts is identical to that of full papers.

Format

Please strictly follow the format guidelines of Springer LNCS series. We can not guarantee acceptance of any paper that does not follow these guidelines. Please do not hesitate to ask any questions.

The following are frequent formatting problems:

1.      All figures and tables must be within margins. We will not be able to include in the volume the papers that do not meet this requirement. Indeed, even if your figure or table fits perfectly in your A4 sheets, a part of it will be physically cut off at the printing house when making the book.

2.      All pages must be free of page numbers and page headers. Indeed, your page number 2 will probably have the number 374 in the volume, so please do not number it as 2!

3.      Please do not leave unused space on the pages. Try moving your figures forward if they cause unused space. Avoid if possible the last page being filled less than, say, to 1/3.

4.      No section title should be the last line on the page. Widow and orphan lines are not desirable.

5.      If the title of your paper does not fit in one line, please divide it into logical parts (with Shift-Enter in Word, or \\ in TeX):

Note for Word users: the template sv-lncs.dot currently provided by Springer has the following bugs that you must correct in the text of your paper (if they affect you) in order for it to be accepted:

1.      All centered paragraphs (title, author, address, email, equation, etc.) and some other special paragraphs (table and figure captions) have 0.4cm first line indentation, please set it to 0 (not indented). This can be done through the menu by changing Format | Paragraph | first tab | Indenting frame | Special list box to none or (only for expert users!) Format | Style | Modify | Format | Paragraph | etc.

2.      Bulleted lists seem to have a problem with the bullet character. You can choose another bullet character through the menu Format | Numbering and lists | Bulleted lists | Personalize or (only for expert users!) Format | Style | Modify | Format | Numbering | etc.

3.      Table captions must be centered; this can be changed through the menu by setting Format | Paragraph | Alignment to centered. Also, table caption style has German language, you might want to set it to English through Tools | Language | Define Language.

Submission

We accept only electronic submissions. To submit a paper, send us both or any one of the following:

   PostScript or PDF file. PostScript usually better works with non-English characters.

   Source file in RTF or DOC. Or, file in LaTeX together with a PostScript or PDF files.

When sending us the camera ready paper, please send all of the following:

   Source file in LaTeX or RTF (not in DOC). If you use LaTeX, then also all necessary source files, such as EPS pictures and all style files different from llncs.cls (note that the use of custom style files is strongly discouraged).

   PostScript and PDF file, if you are unable to produce a PDF file. If you use LaTeX, then also DVI file.

   Hard copy (see address below). Only as an exception, you can ask us to print your paper for you (i.e., not to send us the hard copy).

   Copyright form, either the original hard copy (preferable) or a fax (see the number below).

If you are not sure whether some special symbols are printed correctly at our side, we encourage you to send us scanned images or printed copies of the pages in question by fax and/or mail, clearly indicating what symbols are to be checked; e.g., you can draw a circle around the symbol we should check. Note that these copies are complementary; in any case we need your electronic submission.

Contact

Email: see contact options at www.cicling.org/contact.html

Fax: +1 (520) 441-1817 (in the USA).

Street address:

CICLing-2001,
Prof. Alexander Gelbukh,
Laboratorio de Lenguaje Natural,
CIC – Centro de Investigacion en Computacion,
IPN – Instituto Politecnico Nacional,
Av. Juan Dios Batiz s/n esq. Av. M. Othon Mendizabal,
Unidad Profesional “Adolfo Lopez Mateos”,
Col. Zacatenco, C.P. 07738, Mexico D.F.
MEXICO.

Authors of accepted papers: By submitting a paper, at least one author thereby promises, in case of acceptance of the paper, to attend the conf in person to present their paper and to pay the corresponding early registration fee. Unless the current policy changes, the authors of accepted papers will be allowed to register on-site at the early registration rates. Note: We reserve the right to change this information before November 20; please check our website.

Public: Please contact us before November 20 for early registration information.

Registration fee:

A limited number of reduced registrations will be available. To apply, please contact the organizing committee and justify your application. The reduced registration can be provided, among others, to the following categories (not in all cases!):

   People whose fee will not be paid by their institution and whose family income does not allow to afford paying the full fee,

   Those people from underdeveloped countries whose institutions have real difficulties paying the full fee (included: Latin America, Eastern Europe; not included: North America, Western Europe).

   Graeme Hirst (U. Toronto, Canada). A talk on near-synonymy (with Diana Zaiu Inkpen) and a discussion/tutorial on lexical chains (with Alex Budanitsky), see below.

   Ruslan Mitkov (U. of Wolverhampton, UK). A talk on the state of the art in anaphora resolution.

   Sylvain Kahane (U. Paris 7, France). Comparison of Meaning-Text Theory with generative approaches and a Meaning-Text Theory grammar for French.

   To be confirmed: Igor A. Mel'cuk (U. Montreal, Canada). He is the author of the Meaning-Text Theory of language understanding and translation.

   To be confirmed: Ivan Sag (Stanford U., USA). He is one of the key developers of the HPSG theory, probably the most widely accepted modern syntactic theory.

 

Lexical Chains and Measures of Semantic Similarity

Alexander Budanitsky and Graeme Hirst
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto

Lexical chains in text are structures refelcting cohesion in the text.  They include not only term repetition and corefernce but   also "similarity" relationships such as synonymy, hypernymy, and  meronymy. We will discuss lexical chains and their applications, with an emphasis on what counts as similarity and how can be measured.

We are considering several possibilities: a hotel at the conf place, a hotel at the Historical Center, or an affordable hotel rather near to the Historical Center. You can help us make the decision; please send us your vote.

The hotel **** El Ejecutivo is affordable, nice, and located in the central district. Address: Av. Viena # 8, Colonia Juarez, Mexico DF, 06600. Tel. +52 (5) 566-6422, 566-6565, fax for reservations +52 (5) 535-5088. Here you also can see a booklet with some info and a local map, and here the other side of the booklet.

Rates (approximately):

   Single: US$35 per night,

   Double: $38.50 (shared $19.25/person) per night.

   Triple: $42.50 (shared $14.17/person) per night.

You do not need to reserve your room, we will do it for you. Please send us a message indicating:

   your name,

   dates: from what day to what day you will stay in the hotel

   type of the room (single, double, triple, JR suite, Master suite),

   the number of persons,

   whether you prefer to share the room with other persons (e.g., you can indicate a shared triple room for one person; in this case you will share this room with other two persons),

   male or female (for shared rooms),

   any other indications (e.g., with whom you would prefer to share the room).

Currently all info regarding the hotel is preliminary. In any case, though, we will provide you with a reservation in a hotel of comparable quality and comparable rates.

How to get to the Hotel El Ejecutivo

At the airport, there are no carts to carry your luggage after your pass the customs. You can hire a carrier; you should tip him at least some US$2 (20 pesos).

Ask for the authorized taxi service. It is located in the central part of the airport building, there you pay to a window and receive a ticket. You do not pay anything to the driver. When buying the ticket, you indicate the zone that in your case will be "Zona Rosa," or "Zona Central". You pay about US$10 (100 pesos) or less.

To the taxi driver, tell the address: Zona Rosa, Calle Viena (pasar por Reforma), #8, hotel "El Ejecutivo." Please print out this page and show the address to the driver.

How to get to CIC, the conf place

See the local site map. You are advised to print out this image. See also a photo of the building.

Address: CIC building, Av. Juan de Dios Batiz unnumbered, cross with Av. Miguel Othon de Mendizabal Ote, Unidad Profesional "Adolfo Lopez Mateos" of the InstitutoPolitecnicoNacional (IPN). Zip code: 07738. Mexico City, MEXICO.

Taxi: The taxi from the Central zone should cost about 30 pesos (US$3). Go north by Av. Eje Central Cien Metros until the Subway station "Politecnico," and you are almost here; you can continue on foot or in taxi. Pass the Subway station, pass one building more (car dealer Ford MYLSA, a glass building), turn right by Av. Venus, and enter the IPN territory gate. The nearest 3-floor pink building is the CIC. You can print out the following text in Spanish and show it to the taxi driver:

"Va al Norte por Eje Central Cien Metros hasta el Metro Politecnico, paselo, pase un edificio mas (tienda de autmoviles seminuevos MYLSA), de vuelta a la derecha (por la calle Venus), entre en el IPN, va al edificio rojo de 3 pisos."

Metro: By the Yellow line, go North to the terminal station Politecnico. Exit to "Calle Diana". Walking along the car circulation by the large street (Eje Central), pass one building (car dealer Ford MYLSA, a glass building), turn right, and enter the IPN Institute territory gate. The nearest 3-floor pink building is the CIC.

Bus: There are many buses and microbuses that go along Av. Eje Central to the “Metro Politecnico” Subway station. Ask the driver to tell you when the bus arrives to that station. Then walking along the car circulation by the large street (Eje Central), pass one building (car dealer Ford MYLSA, a glass building), turn right, and enter the IPN Institute territory gate. The nearest 3-floor pink building is the CIC.

Car: Take North Ave. Eje Central Cien Metros. Pass the large bus terminal "Terminal de Autobuses del Norte" (to the right from you). Pass the tower of the Mexican Oil Institute – Instituto Mexicano de Petroleo (to the left from you) and the Subway station "Instituto de Petroleo." When crossing Eje 5 Norte (Montevideo), move to the right lane of Ave. Eje Central Cien Metros. Pass the Subway station "Politecnico" and go slowly. Pass the Ford car dealer MYLSA (a glass building), turn right into Venus street, and enter the IPN gate. Leave some personal identification document at the entrance gate to IPN. The nearest building is CIC, a pink square 3 floor building.

In case of any problem

Call Alexander Gelbukh (or a person who answers) at home: 5597-0709 (local phone) or at work 5729-6000 ext. 56544, 56602, 56518. If someone else responds at home, please speak English (do not speak Spanish).

Useful local information

   Taxi. Taxi in Mexico is very cheap and very frequent in nearly any place of the city. They are easy to recognize: usually these are green or yellow bugs, sometimes green Nissans; the price is the same. To any place you need to go, you probably better go by taxi. Within the city, you would pay from less than US$1 (10 pesos) to US$5 (50 pesos), but you will save a lot of time. You should, however, either ensure that the driver has turned on the taximeter (except for the night time when the taximeters are not used), or agree the price in advance. If you pay by taximeter, you do not need to give tips to the driver. We do not recommend using the taxis waiting near expensive hotels, unless you are sure these are authorized (which can be expensive); you always better stop any green bug passing by the street.

      On the other hand, taxis in Mexico are considered not completely safe (though we do not know what other transport would be much safer). Also, sometimes the drivers do not know the city very well, so assure the driver does know the place you need and does know how to get there. Usually the drivers are honest enough not to fool you about the route, but they might just not know the optimal route.

   Metro and bus. Metro and bus are also very cheap. One trip in metro costs US$0.15 (1.5 pesos); you should buy tickets sold at the entrance.

      Buses and especially microbuses (usually also green) are also very frequent; one bus trip costs some $US0.2 to $US0.4 (2 to 4 pesos) depending on distance, which you pay to the driver. The entrance is only from the front door, exit only from the rear door. There are no fixed stops for microbuses; to take a micro in the street, you should signal it with your hand; to get out of the micro, you should ask the driver to stop (or press a special button to bell usually located above or near to the rear door). In general, we do not recommend you to use buses unless you know very well how to get to the place you need; use taxis instead.

   Food. Food in Mexico is extremely hot (spicy), which can seriously affect you if you do not get used to it. We recommend you to either eat in restaurants or buy food in supermarkets. Ask for European-type food; in a restaurant, ask specifically for a food that is not hot ("no picante" in Spanish). We strongly do not recommend you to eat the food sold in the streets (tacos, tortas, quesadillas); if you want to try it, better do it in the last day of your trip. In restaurants, the waiters expect to be tipped with 10% of the price (i.e., the tips are not included in the price).

      Water in the city water supply is not potable. Potable water is sold in the shops, supermarkets, and in the streets.

   Museums. The museums typically work from 8 am to 5 pm. After 5 pm, you will probably find everything closed. In many museums and archeological zones, on Sunday the entrance is free.

   Credit cards. Major credit cards are typically accepted in restaurants, supermarkets, and most of the shops (ask about your card type if not sure), so you do not need to exchange too much money for pesos. In the city, there are many bankomats where you can get cash from your credit card (at least from a Visa and MasterCard). For currency, usually the best exchange rates are at the Airport; there is no commission.

   Security. The following recommendations are usual for any travel. We do not recommend you to walk alone in the nighttime. You should always avoid carrying with you in the street any valuable objects (even the objects that do not have big commercial value but are valuable for you personally). Accordingly, we do not recommend you to wear any golden jewels, or better no jewels at all. If you still are robbed, it is safer not to resist to a violent robber. Local police usually is of no help in such cases. For the same reason, we recommend you to avoid carrying with you a credit card with too much money on it; possibly you could use different cards, one with your main account and one with a smaller sum for just one-day usage.

(See submission deadlines in the section Important Dates.)

   February 18, Sunday: Registration. Excursion to Teotihuacan: ancient Indian pyramids.

   February 19, Monday: Registration. Talks. Welcome party.

   February 20, Tuesday: Talks. Possibly excursion to the City Center.

   February 21, Wednesday: Excursion to Angangueo: Monarch Butterfly wintering site.

   February 22, Thursday: Talks and workshops.

   February 23, Friday: Talks and workshops. Excursion to the AnthropologicalMuseum.

   February 24, Saturday: Excursion to Cacahuamilpa and Taxco: great cave and colonial city.

Note: This schedule is tentative; in particular, the order of excursions can change.

The list of accepted papers is here.

Excursions

One of the most exciting things at the conference are excursions to the ancient Indian pyramids and visiting a unique nature phenomenon, the Monarch Butterfly wintering site where you can see millions of beautiful butterflies in the trees and in the air around you. In common opinion of the last year’s participants, the excursions were excellent; you can see their own photos: by Alexander, by Karine, by Ted..

Here is the tentative list of excursions:

   Excursion to the Anthropological Museum(Mexico City)

   Excursion to Teotihuacan: ancient Indian pyramids, 1 hour drive

   Excursion to Cacahuamilpa and Taxco: great cave and colonial city, 2 hours drive

   Excursion to Angangueo: Monarch Butterfly wintering site, 4 hours drive

Note for former CICLing-2000 participants: We do understand that repeating the same excursions is a bad idea. On the other hand, these are the best of the best ones, and significantly changing the list would not be fair to the new participants. If you have any specific idea what you would like to visit, please let us know and we will try to arrange for this.

We are open to any ideas on what excursions would be interested. Please write us your ideas.

Welcome party

The reception party will be combined with the opening of the Poster and Demo section. We will have some snack, maybe some wine. No music, no serious food, even no tables, sorry. You will enjoy the informal atmosphere to speak with each other and with the presenters of the posters and demos. You will also have a chance to show and discuss your own programs (for this, please let us know your software and hardware requirements).

This year, the conference features a very strong international Program Committee. Please read the list: if you are seriously involved in computational linguistics, you will be surprised how many of the names you will find very familiar.

Program Committee

1.      Baeza-Yates, Ricardo, Chile

2.      Blekhman, Michael, Canada

3.      Boitet, Christian, France

4.      Bolshakov, Igor, Mexico

5.      Brusilovsky, Peter, USA

6.      Calzolari, Nicoletta, Italy

7.      Cassidy, Patrick, USA

8.      Cristea, Dan, Romania

9.      Gelbukh, Alexander (chair), Mexico

10.Guzman-Arenas, Adolfo, Mexico

11.Hasida, Koiti, Japan

12.Harada, Yasunari, Japan

13.Hirst, Graeme, Canada

14.Kittredge, Richard, USA / Canada

15.Koch, Gregers, Denmark

16.Laufer, Natalia, Russia

17.Lopez-Lopez, Aurelio, Mexico

18.Loukanova, Roussanka, USA / Bulgaria

19.Maegard, Bente, Denmark

20.Martin-Vide, Carlos, Spain

21.Mel’cuk, Igor, Canada

22.Metais, Elisabeth, France

23.Milicevic, Jasmina, Canada

24.Mitkov, Ruslan, UK

25.Murata, Masaki, Japan

26.Narin’yani, Alexander, Russia

27.Nevzorova, Olga, Russia

28.Nirenburg, Sergei, USA

29.Palomar, Manuel, USA / Spain

30.Pedersen, Ted, USA

31.Pineda-Cortes, Luis Alberto, Mexico

32.Piperidis, Stelios, Greece

33.Sag, Ivan, USA

34.Sidorov, Grigori, Mexico

35.Sharoff, Serge, Russia

36.Sun Maosong, China

37.Trujillo, Arturo, UK

38.T’sou Ka-yin, Benjamin, Hong Kong

39.Verspoor, Karin, USA / The Netherlands

40.Vilares Ferro, Manuel, Spain

41.Wilks, Yorick, UK

Organizing committee

1.      Alexander Gelbukh (chair)

2.      Carlos Vizcaino Sahagun

3.      Carlos Ulloa

4.      Soila Vargas Garcia

5.      Teresa Salcedo Camarena

6.      Sofia Galicia Haro

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Comments: A.Gelbukh.