COGWS 2012 - EACL 2012 Workshop on Computational Models of Language Acquisition and Loss

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Category COGWS 2012

Deadline: January 20, 2012 | Date: April 25, 2012-April 28, 2012

Venue/Country: Avignon, France

Updated: 2011-11-23 18:26:38 (GMT+9)

Call For Papers - CFP

Computational Models of Language Acquisition and Loss

http://sites.google.com/site/eaclcogws/

Deadline for Submissions: January, 20th, 2012

The past decades have seen a massive expansion in the application of

statistical and machine learning methods to speech and natural

language processing. This work has yielded impressive results

which have generally been viewed as engineering achievements. Recently

researchers have begun to investigate the relevance of computational

learning methods for research on human language acquisition and loss.

The human ability to acquire and process language has long attracted

interest and generated much debate due to the apparent ease with which

such a complex and dynamic system is learnt and used on the face of

ambiguity, noise and uncertainty. On the other hand, changes in

language abilities during aging and eventual losses related to conditions

such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia have also attracted considerable

investigative efforts. Parallels between the acquisition and loss have

been raised, and a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in both,

and of how the algorithms used to access concepts are affected in pathological

cases can lead to earlier diagnosis and more targeted treatments.

The use of computational modeling is a relatively recent trend boosted

by advances in machine learning techniques, and the availability of resources

like corpora of child and child-directed sentences, and data from psycholinguistic

tasks by normal and pathological groups. Many of the existing computational

models attempt to study language tasks under cognitively plausible criteria

(such as memory and processing limitations that humans face), and to explain

the developmental stages observed in the acquisition and evolution of the

language abilities.

The workshop is targeted at anyone interested in the relevance of computational

techniques for understanding first, second and bilingual language acquisition

and change or loss in normal and pathological conditions. Long and

short papers are invited on, but not limited to, the following topics:

*Computational learning theory and analysis of language learning

*Computational models of first, second and bilingual language acquisition

*Computational models of language changes in e.g. dementia and

Alzheimer?s Disease

*Computational models and analysis of factors that influence language

acquisition and loss in different age groups and cultures

*Computational models of various aspects of language and their

interaction in acquisition and change

*Computational models of the evolution of language

*Data resources and tools for investigating computational models of

human language processes

*Empirical and theoretical comparisons of the environment and its

impact on acquisition/loss

*Cognitively oriented Bayesian models of language processes

*Computational methods for acquiring various linguistic information

(related to e.g. speech, lexicon, syntax, and semantics) and their

relevance to research on human language acquisition

*Investigations and comparisons of supervised, unsupervised and

weakly-supervised methods for learning (e.g. machine learning,

statistical, symbolic, biologically-inspired, active learning,

various hybrid models)

SUBMISSIONS

We invite three different submission modalities:

* Regular long papers (8 content pages + 1 page for references):

Long papers should report on solid and finished research

including new experimental results, resources and/or techniques.

* Regular short papers (4 content pages + 1 page for references):

Short papers should report on small experiments, focused contributions,

ongoing research, negative results and/or philosophical discussion.

* System demonstration (2 pages): System demonstration papers should

describe and document the demonstrated system or resources. We

encourage the demonstration of both early research prototypes and

mature systems, that will be presented in a separate demo session.

All submissions must be in PDF format and must follow the EACL

2012 formatting requirements (available at

http://eacl2012.org/information-for-authors/index.html).

We strongly advise the use of the provided Word or LaTeX template

files. For long and short papers, the reported research should

be substantially original. The papers will be presented orally or as

posters. The decision as to which paper will be presented orally

and which as poster will be made by the program committee based

on the nature rather than on the quality of the work.

Reviewing will be double-blind, and thus no author information

should be included in the papers; self-reference should be

avoided as well. Papers that do not conform to these requirements

will be rejected without review. Accepted papers will appear in the

workshop proceedings, where no distinction will be made between

papers presented orally or as posters.

Submission and reviewing will be electronic, managed by the START system:

https://www.softconf.com/eacl2012/Cognitive2012/

Submissions must be uploaded onto the START system by the submission deadline:

January 20, 2012 (11:59pm Samoa Time; UTC/GMT -11 hours)

Please chose the appropriate submission type from the starting

submission page, according to the category of your paper.

IMPORTANT DATES

Jan 20, 2012 Paper submission deadline

Feb 20, 2012 Notification of acceptance

Mar 09, 2012 Camera-ready deadline

Apr 23 or 24, 2012 Workshop

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Afra Alishahi, Tilburg University (Netherlands)

Colin J Bannard, University of Texas at Austin (USA)

Marco Baroni, University of Trento (Italy)

Jim Blevins, University of Cambridge (UK)

Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Antal van den Bosch, Tilburg University (Netherlands)

Alexander Clark, Royal Holloway, University of London (UK)

Robin Clark, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

Matthew W. Crocker, Saarland University (Germany)

James Cussens, University of York (UK)

Walter Daelemans, University of Antwerp (Belgium) and Tilburg University (Netherlands)

Barry Devereux, University of Cambridge (UK)

Sonja Eisenbeiss, University of Essex (UK)

Afsaneh Fazly, University of Toronto (Canada)

Cynthia Fisher, University of Illinois (USA)

Jeroen Geertzen, University of Cambridge (UK)

Henriette Hendriks, University of Cambridge (UK)

Marco Idiart, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Aravind Joshi, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

Shalom Lappin, King's College London (UK)

Alessandro Lenci, University of Pisa (Italy)

Igor Malioutov, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Stanford University (USA)

Fanny Meunier, Lumière Lyon 2 University (France)

Brian Murphy, Carnegie Mellon University (USA)

Maria Alice Parente, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Massimo Poesio, University of Essex (UK)

Brechtje Post, University of Cambridge (UK)

Ari Rappoport, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)

Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)

Kenji Sagae, University of Southern California (USA)

Sabine Schulte im Walde, University of Stuttgart (Germany)

Ekaterina Shutova, University of Cambridge (UK)

Maity Siqueira, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Mark Steedman, University of Edinburgh (UK)

Shuly Wintner, University of Haifa (Israel)

Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania (USA)

Beracah Yankama, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

Menno van Zaanen, Macquarie University (Australia)

Michael Zock, LIF, CNRS, Marseille (France)

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS AND CONTACT

Robert Berwick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

Anna Korhonen, University of Cambridge (UK)

Thierry Poibeau, LaTTiCe-CNRS (France) and University of Cambridge (UK)

Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and

Massachussets Institute of Technology (USA)

For any inquiries regarding the workshop please send an email

to cognitivemodels2012gmail.com