[Lign274] [Fwd: [Corpora-List] CFP: PsychoCompLA-2007]

[Roger Levy]

Just to give a sense of what's out there...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Corpora-List] CFP: PsychoCompLA-2007
Date: Thu,  5 Apr 2007 22:19:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu
To: corpora at uib.no

************* Call for Papers **************

Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition

               PsychoCompLA-2007

August 1st at CogSci 2007 - Nashville, Tennessee

Submission Deadline: May 22, 2007

http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/

Workshop Topic:

The workshop is devoted to psychologically-motivated computational 
models of language acquisition. That is, models that are compatible with 
research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics.

Invited Speakers:

* Elissa Newport, University of Rochester
* Shimon Edelman, Cornell University
* Damir Cavar, University of Zadar, University of Indiana
* Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University
* Terry Regier, University of Chicago
* Alex Clark, Royal Holloway University of London
* Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania

Workshop Description:

This workshop will present research and foster discussion centered 
around psychologically-motivated computational models of language 
acquisition, with an emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. In recent 
decades there has been a thriving research agenda that applies 
computational learning techniques to emerging natural language 
technologies and many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to 
present such research. However, there have been only a few (but growing 
number of) venues in which psychocomputational models of how humans 
acquire their native language(s) are the primary focus.
By psychocomputational models we mean models that are compatible with, 
or might inform research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology 
or linguistics.

Psychocomputational models of language acquisition are of particular 
interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology that 
suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical 
patterns in an audible input stream. Though, how children might 
plausibly apply statistical 'machinery' to the task of grammar 
acquisition, with or without an innate language component, remains an 
open and important
question. One effective line of investigation is to
computationally model the acquisition process and determine 
interrelationships between a model and linguistic or psycholinguistic 
theory, and/or correlations between a model's performance and data from 
linguistic environments that children are exposed to.

Although there has been a significant amount of presented research 
targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories, morphology and 
phonology, research aimed at modeling syntax acquisition has just begun 
to emerge.

Workshop History:

This is the third meeting of the Psychocomputational Models of Human 
Language Acquisition workshop following PsychoCompLA-2004, held in 
Geneva, Switzerland as part of the 20th International Conference on 
Computational Linguistics (COLING
2004) and PsychoCompLA-2005 as part of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the 
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-2005) held in Ann Arbor, 
Michigan where the workshop shared a joint session with the Ninth 
Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2005).

Workshop Organizer:
William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York
(sakas at hunter.cuny.edu)

Workshop Co-organizer:
David Guy Brizan, City University of New York
(dbrizan at gc.cuny.edu)

Submission details:

Authors are invited to submit abstracts of 1 page plus 1 page for data 
and other supplementary materials. Abstracts should be anonymous, 
clearly titled and no more than 500 words in length. Text of the 
abstract should fit on one page, with a second page for examples, table, 
figures, references, etc. The following
formats are accepted: PDF, PS, and MS Word. Please include a cover sheet 
(as a separate attachment) containing the title of your submission, your 
name, contact details and affiliation. Please send your submission 
electronically to Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu. The accepted abstracts 
will appear in the online workshop proceedings. Full papers will be 
considered for a submission for a special issue of a Cognitive Science 
Society Journal in the fall.

Submission deadline: May 22, 2007

Topics and Goals:

Abstracts that present research on (but not necessarily limited to) the 
following topics are welcome:

* Models that address the acquisition of word-order;
* Models that combine parsing and learning;
* Formal learning-theoretic and grammar induction models that 
incorporate psychologically plausible constraints;
* Comparative surveys that critique previously reported studies;
* Models that have a cross-linguistic or bilingual perspective;
* Models that address learning bias in terms of innate
linguistic knowledge versus statistical regularity in the
input;
* Models that employ language modeling techniques from corpus linguistics;
* Models that employ techniques from machine learning;
* Models of language change and its effect on language
acquisition or vice versa;
* Models that employ statistical/probabilistic grammars;
* Computational models that can be used to evaluate existing linguistic 
or developmental theories (e.g., principles & parameters, optimality 
theory, construction grammar, etc.)
* Empirical models that make use of child-directed corpora such as CHILDES.

This workshop intends to bring together researchers from cognitive 
psychology, computational linguistics, other computer/mathematical 
sciences, linguistics and
psycholinguistics working on all areas of language acquisition. 
Diversity and cross-fertilization of ideas is the central goal.

Contact: Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu

FYI, Related 2007 Meetings

Machine Learning and Cognitive Science of Language Acquisition
21-22 June, 2007

Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Acquisition
29 June, 2007

Exemplar-Based Models of Language Acquisition and Use
6-17 August, 2007