Workshop on Computational Models for Spatial Language Interpretation and Generation (CoSLI-2)

In conjunction with CogSci 2011
Boston, USA, 20-23 July

Submission Deadline:  13 May 2011

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

Competence in spatial language modeling is a cardinal issue in disciplines including Cognitive Psychology, Computational Linguistics, and Computer Science. Within Cognitive Psychology, the relation of spatial language to models of spatial representation and reasoning is considered essential to the development of more complete models of psycholinguistic and cognitive linguistic theories. Meanwhile, within Computer Science and Computational Linguistics, the development of a wide class of so-called situated systems such as robotics, virtual characters, and Geographic Information Systems is heavily dependent on the existence of adequate models of spatial language use.

Achieving competence in spatial language requires that appropriate meanings be assigned to spatial terms used in language, such as location, motion, orientation, perspective, projective, topological, distance, or path descriptive markers. The computational modeling of such spatial language meanings in turn supports the interpretation of an intended spatial meaning as well as the generation of adequate linguistic expressions in certain situations and contexts. It is now widely recognized that spatial term meaning depends on functional and pragmatic features in many ways. Competent models of spatial language interpretation and generation must thus draw on complex models of situated meaning by developing heterogeneous approaches with qualitative and quantitative models and by combining geometric, functional, pragmatic, and cognitive features in multi-modal contexts and applications.

AIMS

The main objective of the CoSLI-2 workshop is to foster computational formalisms and approaches for interpreting or generating spatial language that take into account cognitive, functional, or embodiment criteria in modeling. In particular, this year’s workshop theme is “Function in Spatial Language: From evidence to execution”, and we welcome in particular any contributions which aim to address the issues of modeling function or pragmatic features in spatial language interpretation or generation. More generally, the workshop also welcomes contributions that address symbolic and embodied spatial language interpretation and generation. This topic remains an ongoing issue in both natural language processing and cognitive science, and novel work is encouraged. Such work includes both formal and empirical models of spatial language templates and linguistic calculi, corpus-based and statistical methods, combinations of symbolic and sub-symbolic representations, and aspects of sensory-motor and multi-modal information. Contributions to spatial language interpretation and generation that integrate results from empirical and psychological frameworks for spatial language and that can improve and support situated natural language systems are also particularly welcomed.

TOPICS

We particularly welcome contributions that address the following:

• Computational models of spatial language that integrate cognitive, functional, or pragmatic aspects either in terms of implemented systems, computational models, empirical findings, or position papers that make clear a novel approach to this problem

More generally we invite papers that address topics including:

• Computational models of spatial language processing based on formal symbolic and qualitative theories
• Computational models of spatial language processing based on embodied or quantitative models
• Models for processing spatial language in vision recognition systems, GIS, dialogue systems, robotics, and other applications
• Connectionist theories of spatial language
• Dynamic systems models of spatial term meaning
• Linguistically-inspired formal spatial calculi and their applications
• Metaphorical use of spatial language and its processing
• Computing spatial alignments in human-computer interaction
• Models for cross-cultural natural language processing
• Spatial language corpora for certain tasks or applications
• Models for sign languages and spatial gestures

SUBMISSION

All papers should be submitted in English as PDF documents. We welcome full papers of length 4-6 pages formatted in accordance with the Springer LNCS style (see http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission Deadline — 13 May 2011
Notification –13 June 2011
Final Version Deadline — 1 July 2011
Workshop Day — 20 July 2011

ORGANIZERS:

Joana Hois
University of Bremen
Germany

Robert Ross
Artificial Intelligence Group
Dublin Institute of Technology
Ireland

John Kelleher
Artificial Intelligence Group
Dublin Institute of Technology
Ireland

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

• Marios Avraamides, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
• John Bateman, University of Bremen, Germany
• Kenny Coventry, Northumbria University, UK
• Alexander Klippel, Penn State, USA
• Amitabha Mukerjee, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
• Philippe Muller, Université Paul Sabatier, France
• David Schlangen, University of Bielefeld, Germany
• Emile van der Zee, University of Lincoln, UK
• Joost Zwarts, Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands

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