CICLing-2003

Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics

February 16 to 22, 2003
Mexico City, Mexico

Endorsed by the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
In cooperation with KTWeb

Publication: Springer LNCS
Deadline: full papers: October 10, short papers: October 20
Keynote speakers: Eric Brill, Aravind Joshi, Adam Kilgarriff, Ted Pedersen
Excursions: Ancient pyramids, Monarch butterflies, great cave, and more

 

 

This conference is the fourth CICLing event. The past CICLing conferences have been very successful, according to the comments of the participants. One of the messages we have received after the 2000 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.

We consider the following factors to define our identity:

   General interest. The conf 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 interaction. It is intended for a small group of professionals, some 50 participants. This allows for informal and friendly atmosphere, more resembling a friendly party than an official event. At CICLing you can pass hours speaking with your favorite famous scientists who you scarcely could greet in the crowd at large confs.

   Excellent excursions. Mexico is a wonderful country rich in culture, history, and nature. The conference is intended for people feeling themselves young in their souls, adventurous explorers in both science and life. Our cultural program brings the participants to unique marvels of history and nature hidden from the usual tourists.

   Relief from 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 conf 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 conf is organized by the Natural Language Processing laboratory of CIC (you can find some our publications at www.Gelbukh.com).

In general, we are interested in whatever helps, 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 general 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

   Lexical resources

Intelligent text processing and applications:

   Document classification and search

   Information retrieval

   Information extraction

   Text mining

   Automatic summarization

   Spell checking

   Natural language interfaces

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

   HPSG

   Ambiguity resolution

   Word Sense Disambiguation

   Anaphora resolution

   Subcategorization

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

On the other hand, we are not interested in the topics not related to computational processing of human 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 computational applications, e.g.: Evolution of personal names in classic Latin.

No  purely computer topics unrelated to meaningful language processing, e.g.: Unicode character table for Mayan glyphs, or: Pentium-V processors with 512 MB cache make syntactic analyzers work faster.

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

Note that applications of computer methods to purely linguistic research are usually not interesting for our conf, e.g., Statistical clustering methods for the construction of historical tree of world languages. We are interested in how linguistics and computer science can help computers understand or process texts, not in how computers can help linguists investigate languages (unless the aim of such investigation would eventually help computers understand texts).

If you are not sure whether your particular topic is of interest, please do not hesitate to ask us. You can also have a look at the past CICLing-2002, CICLing-2001, or CICLing-2000 program to get an idea of our interests.

   Eric Brill (Microsoft Research, USA).

   Aravind Joshi, (U. Pennsylvania, USA: ACL Lifetime Achievement Award 2002; Rumelhart Prize for Contributions to Human Cognition 2002; ACM Fellow Award 1998, etc.).

   Adam Kilgarriff (Brighton U., UK).

   Ted Pedersen (U. of Minnesota, USA).

     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.

Authors of rejected full papers will be given a chance to re-submit their works as short papers before November 5.

Please note that the camera-ready deadline is firm. We do not guarantee the inclusion of any paper that does not arrive (camera-ready version) by the midnight November 15.

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 register on-site at the early registration rate.Note: We reserve the right to change this information before November 15; 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 us 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 affording 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). Please note that we mean the real difficulties, not just being from such a country, since the conf organizers are also from an underdeveloped country.

Publication

All accepted full and short papers will be published in a Proceedings volume edited by Springer-Verlag in its Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (listed here).

The full papers should not exceed 12 pages, though we encourage you to keep it as short as possible (but not shorter!). If you really need more pages, please let us know.

Short papers should not exceed 4 pages and should, if possible, contain references to Internet sites where more detail on the work can be found. Otherwise the format of the short papers is identical to that of full papers.

Format

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

The following are frequent formatting problems:

1.     All figures and tables must be within margins. We will not be able to include the papers that do not meet this requirement.

2.     All pages must be free of page numbers and page headers.

3.     Please do not leave unused space on the pages. Try moving your figures if they cause unused space. Avoid if possible the last page being filled to less than 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 published:

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, which should be properly formatted. To submit a paper, send us both or any one of the following at:

   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 file.

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.

   Copyright form by fax at +1 (928) 441-1817.

Please do not send us any hard copies.

If you are not sure whether some special symbols are printed correctly at our side, we encourage you to send us scanned images or fax the pages in question, clearly indicating what symbols are to be checked; e.g., you can draw a circle around the symbol(s) in question.

Contact

Email: See email options at www.CICLing.org/contact.html.

Fax: +1 (928) 441-1817 (in the USA).

Street address: (Please avoid sending us hard copies. We might not receive them on time!)

CICLing-2003,
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.

Short papers

The papers can be submitted either as full papers or as short papers (also to be published in the Proceedings). The authors of short papers will present their works as posters or demos. Whenever possible, a short paper should give references to Internet sites where more detailed info on the work can be found.

The authors of some of the rejected full papers will be recommended by the Committee to re-submit their works as short papers. They will be given 5 days to convert their rejected full paper into a short paper. Short papers are subject to a strict reviewing process.

Publication format:All accepted short papers will be published in the Proceedings by Springer-Verlag and thus must be prepared in the required format. In particular, they must have the same sections as a full paper: title, abstract, references. In all other respects short papers must follow Springer requirements. Short papers are limited to 4 pages.

Poster/demo format: Authors of the short papers will present them as posters and/or demos. They will be given approximately 2 square meters of vertical surface to attach their 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 to 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 can be given during short breaks and after the end of the regular talks. On the first working day of the conf, the Poster/Demo session will be combined with the Welcome party.

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 95/98/2000/ME/XP (either one of these by our choice, no guarantee of some specific version), CD and floppy drives; no significant space on the disk is guaranteed. Those who need a specific version of Windows or some another OS or platform should contact the Committee in advance. Similarly, those who need some significant disk space, Internet access, or any special hardware or software.

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.

New: The Conference program (schedule) is here.

See submission deadlines in the section Important Dates.

The following schedule and, in particular, the list of excursions and their exact dates is tentative.

There will be four working days and three days of excursions. You can arrive on Monday and leave on Friday if you wish; then you will loose two excursions.

  February 16, Sunday: Excursion to Teotihuacan: ancient Indian pyramids.

  February 17, Monday: Registration. Talks. Welcome party.

  February 18, Tuesday: Talks.

  February 19, Wednesday: Excursion to Angangueo: Monarch Butterfly wintering site.

  February 20, Thursday: Talks.

  February 21, Friday: Talks and discussions. Excursion to the AnthropologicalMuseum.

  February 22, Saturday: Excursion to Cacahuamilpa and Taxco: very large cave and colonial city.

We will try to arrange for an alternative excursion to the City Center on Wednesday; no guarantee yet.

Note for the participants of a past CICLing: I apologize for repeating the same excursions. I advise you two options: either to stay just from Monday to Friday or to arrive earlier and visit some very interesting places where we cannot organize an excursion. For example: Tula (2 hours by bus), El Tajin (7 hours); or: arrive to Cancun and visit Chichen-Iza, Uxmal, Palenque, La Venta-Villahermosa traveling to Mexico City (2 nights in bus, 3 days of sightseeing). There are many other good options if you are adventurous enough and can rent a car or pass nights in the buses. Please ask us for more info.

New: The Conference program (schedule) is here.

 

You might want to have a look at the past CICLing-2002, CICLing-2001 or CICLing-2000 programs or CICLing-2002, CICLing-2001, or CICLing-2000 tables of contents.

Excursions

NEW:The preliminary schedule of the excursions can be found in the Schedule of the Conf.

One of the most exciting things at the conference are excursions to the ancient Indian pyramids and visiting a unique natural 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: CICLing-2000, CICLing-2001, CICLing-2002, and Ted’s site.

Warning: the excursion to the Butterflies is very long and tiresome, especially for not so young people. We think it is worth the trouble, but you decide. What is more, after the death of very many butterflies in 2002, we do not know if their population will recover for the conf time. If not, this excursion may be cancelled. We will try to arrange for an alternative informal excursion to the city center at the same time as the excursion to the Butterflies.

Here is the tentative list of excursions:

   Excursion to the Anthropological Museum: inside Mexico City

   Excursion to the City Center; tentative and informal

   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 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 other excursions would be interested. Please write us your ideas.

Welcome party

The reception party will be combined with the Poster and Demo section. We will have some snack, maybe some wine. (No music, no real food, even no tables, sorry: we consider official banquets waste of your valuable time.) 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).

We suggest that it is convenient for the participants to stay in the same hotel, to facilitate informal interaction. Usually our participants form ad-hoc informal companies in the hotel reception to go to some restaurant, walking tours, etc.

We will provide free transportation from the recommended hotel to the conf place. Also, we will try to get discounted rates for the conf participants in this hotel.

It is probable that the recommended hotel will be **** El Ejecutivo: it 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$50 per night,

   Double: $60 (shared $30/person) per night.

   Triple: $70 (shared $24/person) per night.

You do not need to reserve your room; we will do it for you. Please send 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; we will try to find someone to share the room with you, though no guarantee!),

   male or female (for shared rooms),

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

Here you can find the following information:

   How to get to the Hotel El Ejecutivo,

   How to get to CIC, the conf place,

   Useful local information: currency and credit cards, transportation, food museums, security.

Program Committee

1.     Barbu, Catalina, UK

2.     Boitet, Christian, France

3.     Bolshakov, Igor, Mexico

4.     Bontcheva, Kalina, UK

5.     Brusilovsky, Peter, USA

6.     Calzolari, Nicoletta, Italy

7.     Carroll, John, UK

8.     Cassidy, Patrick, USA

9.     Cristea, Dan, Romania

10.Gelbukh, Alexander (chair), Mexico

11.Hasida, Koiti, Japan

12.Harada, Yasunari, Japan

13.Hirst, Graeme, Canada

14.Johnson, Frances, UK

15.Kittredge, Richard, USA / Canada

16.Kharrat, Alma, USA

17.Knudsen, Line, Denmark

18.Koch, Gregers, Denmark

19.Kuebler, Sandra, Germany

20.Lappin, Shalom, UK

21.Laufer, Natalia, Russia

22.Lopez-Lopez, Aurelio, Mexico

23.Loukanova, Roussanka, USA / Bulgaria

24.Luedeling, Anke, Germany

25.Maegaard, Bente, Denmark

26.Martin-Vide, Carlos, Spain

27.Mel’cuk, Igor, Canada

28.Metais, Elisabeth, France

29.Mikheev, Andrei, UK

30.Mitkov, Ruslan, UK

31.Murata, Masaki, Japan

32.Narin’yani, Alexander, Russia

33.Nevzorova, Olga, Russia

34.Nirenburg, Sergei, USA

35.Palomar, Manuel, Spain

36.Pedersen, Ted, USA

37.Pineda-Cortes, Luis Alberto, Mexico

38.Piperidis, Stelios, Greece

39.Ren, Fuji, Japan

40.Sag, Ivan, USA

41.Sidorov, Grigori, Mexico

42.Sharoff, Serge, Russia

43.Sun Maosong, China

44.Tait, John, UK

45.Trujillo, Arturo, UK

46.T’sou Ka-yin, Benjamin, Hong Kong

47.Van Guilder, Linda, USA

48.Verspoor, Karin, USA / The Netherlands

49.Vilares Ferro, Manuel, Spain

50.Wilks, Yorick, UK

Organizing committee

1.     Alexander Gelbukh (chair)

2.     Teresa Salcedo-Camarena

3.     Other members to be added.

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