COMLACO 2017
COMPUTATIONAL METHODS FOR MEASURING LANGUAGE COMPLEXITY
https://comlaco.wordpress.com/

WORKSHOP HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH

IJCAI-2017
INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
http://ijcai-17.org/

MELBOURNE, AUGUST 19-25, 2017


PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: May 15, 2017


SCOPE

This workshop focuses on natural language complexity. Complexity has become an important concept in several scientific disciplines. There has been a lot of research on complexity and complex systems in the natural sciences, economics, social sciences and, now, also increasingly in linguistics. Are all languages equally complex? Does it make sense to compare the complexity of languages? Can languages differ in complexity? Complexity is a controversial concept in linguistics. Until recently, natural language complexity has not been widely researched and still not clear how complexity has to be defined and measured. Twentieth century most theoretical linguists have defended the equi-complexity dogma, which states that the total complexity of a natural language is fixed because sub-complexities in linguistic sub-systems trade off. This idea of equi-complexity, seen for decades as an unquestioned truism of linguistics, has begun to be explicitly questioned in recent years. There have been attempts to apply the concept of complexity used in other disciplines in order to find useful tools to calculate linguistic complexity. Information theory, computational models or the theory of complex systems are examples of areas that provide measures to quantitatively evaluate linguistic complexity.

Many models have been proposed to confirm or refute the hypothesis of linguistic equi-complexity. The tools, criteria and measures to quantify the level of complexity of languages vary and depend on the specific research interests and on the definition of complexity adopted. In fact, there is no agreement in the literature about how to define complexity. Instead, in the literature, we can find a variety of approaches that has led to linguistic complexity taxonomy: absolute complexity vs. relative complexity; global complexity vs. local complexity; system complexity vs. structural complexity, etc. Currently, there is no clear solution to quantify the complexity of languages and each of the proposed models has advantages and disadvantages.

Linguistic complexity is also a key point in automatic natural language processing. Therefore, we propose a cross-discipline workshop that foster exchange of ideas between people in the area of artificial intelligence and natural language processing and people dealing with natural language complexity from a cognitive or a theoretical point of view. The main objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers from different areas that have in common their interest on linguistic complexity boosting the interchange of knowledge and methods between specialists that have approached complexity from different viewpoints. We want to promote interdisciplinarity among researchers that are dealing with any type of language complexity.

Therefore, we are interested in contributions introducing new methods, models, definitions and measures to assess natural languages complexity. We are especially interested in computational and formal approaches to linguistic complexity.


TOPICS

Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Complexity in human natural language processing
• Complexity in automatic natural language processing
• Formal tools for measuring linguistic complexity
• Natural language processing tools for measuring linguistic complexity
• Machine learning tools for measuring linguistic complexity
• Information theory measures of linguistic complexity
• Complex systems theory measures for linguistic complexity
• Typological approaches to linguistic complexity
• Psycholinguistic approaches to linguistic complexity
• Cognitive approaches to linguistic complexity


SUBMISSIONS

We invite submissions including original research contributions, applications, surveys, state-of-the-art papers, position papers and work in progress papers.

Submitted papers must be formatted according to IJCAI guidelines (http://ijcai-17.org/MainTrackCFP.html)

Papers must be no longer than 7 pages.

All proposed papers must be submitted in electronic form (PDF format) through EASYCHAIR (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=comlaco2017)

 
REVIEW PROCESS

All submitted papers will undergo a thorough review process; each paper will be refered by at least two experts in the field based on relevance, originality, significance, quality and clarity.

DEADLINES

• Paper submission deadline: May 15, 2017
• Notification of acceptance: June 8, 2017
• Camera ready submission: June 30, 2017
• Workshop dates: August 19-21, 2017 (the exact day to be confirmed)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE MEMBERS

• Dr. Leonor Becerra-Bonache, University of Saint-Etienne, France
• Dr. M. Dolores Jiménez-López, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Spain

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

• Leonor Becerra-Bonache, University of Saint-Etienne, France
• Suna Bensch, Umea University, Sweden
• Henning Christiansen, Roskilde University, Denmark
• Carmen Conti Jiménez, Universidad de Jaén, Spain
• Veronica Dahl, Simon Fraser University, Canada
• Frank Drewes, Umea University, Sweden
• Ramon Ferrer i Cancho, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
• Amaury Habrard, University of Saint-Etienne, France
• María del Carmen Horno Chéliz, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
• Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
• Jeffrey Heinz, University of Delaware, USA.
• François Jacquenet, University of Saint-Etienne, France
• M. Dolores Jiménez-López, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain
• Roussanka Loukanova, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Carlos Martín Vide, Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Spain
• Larry Moss, Indiana University, USA
• Michael Zock, Aix-Marseille Université, France

CONTACT

Please, if you want to contact us, send us an email to the following adresses:

leonor.becerra@univ-st-etienne.fr

mariadolores.jimenez@urv.cat