"FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS"
Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing - FSMNLP 2012
Tenth International Workshop
University of the Basque Country, Donostia - San Sebastián
July 23-25, 2012
http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/fsmnlp2012/

INTRODUCTION

The International Workshop Series of Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing (FSMNLP) is the premier forum of the ACL Special Interest Group on Finite-State Methods (SIGFSM).  It serves researchers and practitioners working on

* natural language processing (NLP) applications or language resources
* theoretical and implementation aspects, or
* their combinations

that have obvious relevance or an explicitly discussed relation to Finite-State Methods in NLP. This year, the Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing (FSMNLP) workshop is part of the Alan Turing Year on the occasion of the Centenary Celebration of his life and work.


TOPICS

FSMNLP invites papers related to themes including but not limited to:

* NLP applications and linguistic aspects of finite-state methods
* Finite-state models of language
* Practices for building morphological models for the world's languages using finite-state technology
* Machine learning of finite-state models of natural language
* Finite-state manipulation software and tools with relevance to NLP


==== SPECIAL THEME: FINITE-STATE NLP IN PRACTICE ====

FSMNLP 2012 will have a special focus on the following topics:

* Practical implementations of linguistic descriptions with finite-state technology, including grammars, machine learning tools, language-specific challenges to finite-state NLP
* Software tools and utilities for finite-state NLP
* Finite-state models of linguistic theories
* Applications of finite-state-based NLP in closely related fields such as comparative linguistics, text processing, field linguistics, applied linguistics, language teaching, and computer-aided translation.

The special theme does not restrict the scope of papers; rather, the purpose is to attract, apart from other topics, a variety of submissions relating to any practical dimension of finite-state NLP.  Especially welcome are succinct short paper (see format below) submissions focused on some specific practical aspect or solution of finite-state NLP. This could be related to e.g. a grammar, a linguistic phenomenon, a linguistic modeling problem, a machine learning problem, or a software tool that implements or uses finite-state technology. We hope that the theme provides us with the possibility of organizing suitable poster, short presentation, and demo sessions related to particular practical problems.

For example, today, a large number of languages have morphological/phonological models based on finite-state technology.  While most such implementations follow standard design patterns, many grammars also contain elegant non-trivial solutions to some language-specific modeling problem (vowel harmony, reduplication, long-distance agreement, opaque phonological alternations, free variation, morphosyntactic restrictions, etc.).  For this year's FSMNLP, we encourage submissions of short papers that focus on documenting such solutions, at the same time providing context by summarizing the development and implementation of the overall grammar.


PREVIOUS EDITIONS

Nine FSMNLP workshops have been organized in the past in: Blois (2011), Pretoria (2009), Ispra (2008), Potsdam (2007), Helsinki (2005), Budapest (2003), Helsinki (2001), Ankara (1998), Budapest (1996).





RELATED EVENTS

FSMNLP 2012 will be organized shortly before CIAA.  The 17th International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata (CIAA) will take place in Porto, Portugal on July 17-20, 2012 (800 km from Donostia-San Sebastián).

These consecutive periods as well as the European locations facilitate the attendance at both conferences.


IMPORTANT DATES

Final submission Deadline: April 23, 2012 May 9, 2012
Notification: June 5, 2012
Camera-ready Version: June 26, 2012

Workshop Dates:
July 23: tutorials & mini-workshops.
July 24-25: main session, poster and demo sessions.


SUBMISSIONS

Papers should present original, unpublished research and implementation results. Simultaneous submission to other venues with published proceedings is prohibited. FSMNLP accepts two kinds of submissions:

* full papers (8 pages + references) reporting completed, significant research,
* short papers (4 pages + references) reporting ongoing work and partial results, implementations, grammars, practical tools, interactive software demos, etc.

Short papers are expected to be presented as system demos in a demo session, posters and/or short presentations, while long papers are presented in a longer presentation session.  Both paper types are published in the ACL anthology.

All submissions are electronic and in PDF format via a web-based submission server.  Authors are strongly encouraged to use ACL (2012) style (available for LaTeX and Word) in producing the PDF document.  These templates are available at:

http://acl2012.org/call/sub01.asp

Information about the author(s) and other identifying information such as obvious self-references (e.g., "We showed in [12] ...") and financial or personal acknowledgements should be omitted in the submitted papers whenever feasible.

Papers will be submitted electronically in PDF using the EasyChair system. The paper can contain a clearly marked appendix and data files to support your claims.  This material will not be published.  While reviewers are urged to consult this extra material for better comprehension, it is at their discretion whether they do so. Such extra material should also be anonymized to the extent feasible.

Use the following link for submission:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fsmnlp2012

The papers and abstracts will be published in FSMNLP 2012 proceedings and archived in the ACL Anthology.  The publication of selected, revised versions of accepted papers in a special journal issue is planned.


INVITED SPEAKERS

Kimmo Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki)


TUTORIALS

We have planned a series of short tutorials (30-60 min. each) addressing some specific application or topic in a concise manner. So far, the following tutorials are planned:

* Spelling and grammar correction with FSTs (Tommi Pirinen, Iñaki Alegria, Mans Hulden)
* Probabilistic parsing with weighted FSTs (Miikka Silfverberg, University of Helsinki)
* Machine learning of automata and transducers (Mans Hulden)


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Iñaki Alegria (University of the Basque Country)
Kenneth R. Beesley (SAP Business Objects, USA)
Francisco Casacuberta (Instituto Tecnológico de Informática, Spain)
Jan Daciuk (Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland)
Frank Drewes (Umeå University, Sweden)
Dale Gerdemann (University of Tübingen, Germany)
Mike Hammond (University of Arizona, USA)
Thomas Hanneforth (University of Potsdam, Germany)
Colin de la Higuera (University of Nantes, France)
Jan Holub (Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic)
Mans Hulden (Ikerbasque, Basque Country)
André Kempe (CADEGE Technologies & Consulting, France)
Andras Kornai (Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary)
Andreas Maletti (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
Mark-Jan Nederhof (University of St Andrews, Scotland)
Kemal Oflazer (Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar)
Maite Oronoz (University of the Basque Country)
Laurette Pretorius (University of South Africa, South Africa)
Strahil Ristov (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia)
Frederique Segond Frederique (ObjectDirect, France)
Max Silberztein (Université de Franche-Comté, France)
Richard Sproat (Oregon Health and Science University, USA)
Trond Trosterud (University of Tromsø, Norway)
Shuly Wintner (University of Haifa, Israel)
Anssi Yli-Jyra (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Menno van Zaanen (Tilburg University, Netherlands)
Lynette van Zijl (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Iñaki Alegria (University of the Basque Country)
Koldo Gojenola (University of the Basque Country)
Izaskun Etxeberria (University of the Basque Country)
Nerea Ezeiza (University of the Basque Country)
Mans Hulden (Ikerbasque)
Amaia Lorenzo (University of the Basque Country)
Esther Miranda (University of the Basque Country)
Maite Oronoz (University of the Basque Country)

Further information about the conference is available at the FSMNLP Conference website:
http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/fsmnlp2012/
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