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First Call for Papers
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The Fourth Linguistic Annotation Workshop (LAW IV)

Held in conjunction with ACL-2010
Uppsala, Sweden
15-16 July 2010
http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~clp/LAW4

Linguistic annotation of natural language corpora is the backbone of supervised methods for statistical natural language processing. The Fourth LAW will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of innovative research on all aspects of linguistic annotation, including the creation/evaluation of annotation schemes, methods for automatic and manual annotation, use and evaluation of annotation software and frameworks, representation of linguistic data and annotations, etc. As in the past, the LAW will serve as a venue for annotation researchers to work towards standardization, best practices, and interoperability of annotation information and software. Specifically,
the goals of this workshop include:

(1) The exchange and propagation of research results with respect to
the annotation, manipulation and exploitation of corpora, taking into
account different applications and theoretical investigations in the
field of language technology and research;

(2) Working towards the harmonization and interoperability from the
perspective of the increasingly large number of tools and frameworks
that support the creation, instantiation, manipulation, querying, and
exploitation of annotated resources;

(3) Pushing the frontier of linguistic annotation and of human language technology by extending the range of linguistic phenomena for which reliable annotation techniques exist.
(4) Working towards a consensus on all issues crucial to the
advancement of the field of corpus annotation.

We invite submissions of long papers and posters, and demonstrations relating to any aspect of the linguistic annotation. Long papers should reflect work in an advanced state, but posters may describe more preliminary work and pilot studies. Posters and proposals for a system demonstration are to be submitted in the form of a short paper. A demonstration proposal should provide an overview of the system to be demonstrated, including functionality, supported input/output formats or structures, supported languages and modalities, etc. Accepted proposals will also appear in the proceedings and are intended to provide background for the demonstration. Papers are invited to address issues in all aspects of linguistic annotation, including but not limited to:

Annotation schemes:
• New and innovative annotation schemes
• Comparison of annotation schemes
Annotation procedures:
• Innovative automated and manual strategies for annotation
• Creation, maintenance, and interactive exploration of annotation structures and annotated data
Annotation software and frameworks:
• Machine learning and knowledge-based methods for automation of corpus annotation
• Development, evaluation and/or innovative use of annotation software frameworks
• Using games and "human computation" (e.g., Mechanical Turk) for annotation
Annotation evaluation:
• Inter-annotator agreement and other evaluation metrics and strategies
• Qualitative evaluation of linguistic representation
Annotation access and use:
• Representation formats/structures for merged annotations of different phenomena, and means to explore/manipulate them
• Linguistic considerations for merging annotations of distinct phenomena
Annotation guidelines and standards:
• Best practices for annotation procedures and/or development and documentation of annotation schemes
• Interoperability of annotation formats and/or frameworks among different systems as well as different tasks, frameworks, modalities, and languages
The special themes for LAW IV are:
• Demands on annotation for machine-learning purposes, such as the size and composition of annotated corpora, the granularity of the linguistic categories that are amenable to supervised machine learning
• Annotation of text transcripts of informal modalities: spoken language, blogs, correspondence, etc.
• Annotation of figurative language (metaphor, metonymy, etc.)


Submissions
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Long paper submissions should not exceed 8 pages in length. Posters and demo descriptions should not exceed 4 pages. Format requirements are the same as for full papers of ACL 2010. See http://acl2010.org/authors.html
for style files. Submission will be electronic, using the Workshop's
submission webpage at START: https://www.softconf.com/acl2010/LAW/

Please indicate on the front page:
- long paper, poster, or demonstration proposal;
- all applicable paper categories from the following list (indicate
multiple categories if appropriate): annotation frameworks and/or
physical formats, annotation scheme design (on linguistic grounds),
annotation tools and systems, corpus annotation, syntax, semantics,
predicate-argument structure, morphology, anaphora, discourse,
opinion/sentiment, annotation for machine learning, informal modalities, figurative languages;
- language(s) your work applies to, as well as those you plan to
handle in the future. If your work is language independent, indicate
this as well;
- any non-standard equipment needed for your paper or demonstration.

All papers must be written and presented in English.


Reviewing
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The reviewing of the papers will be blind. The paper should not
include the authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore,
self-citations and other references (e.g. to projects, corpora, or
software) that could reveal the author's identity should be
avoided. For example, instead of "We previously showed (Smith, 1991)
...", write "Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...".


Important Dates
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Papers due: April 5, 2010
Acceptance/rejection notification: May 6, 2010
Camera-ready final version due: May 16, 2010
Workshop Dates: July 15-16, 2010



Organizers
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Nancy Ide (Vassar College)
Adam Meyers (New York University)
Chu-Ren Huang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Antonio Pareja-Lora (SIC, UCM / OEG, UPM)
Sameer Pradhan (BBN Technologies)
Manfred Stede (Universität Potsdam)
Nianwen Xue (Brandeis University)

Program Committee
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co-chairs:
Nianwen Xue (Brandeis University)
Massimo Poesio (University of Trento)

Program committee Members:

Nicoletta Calzolari (ILC/CNR)
Steve Cassidy (Macquarie University)
Tomaz Erjavec (Josef Stefan Institute)
Katrin Erk (University of Texas at Austin)
Alex Chengyu Fang (City University of Hong Kong)
Chu‐Ren Huang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Nancy Ide (Vassar College)
Richard Johansson (University of Trento)
Aravind Joshi (University of Pennsylvania)
Sandra Kubler (Indiana University)
Seth Kulick (University of Pennsylvania)
Adam Meyers (New York University)
Eleni Miltsakaki (University of Pennsylvania)
Martha Palmer (University of Colorado)
Antonio Pareja‐Lora (SIC, UCM / OEG, UPM)
Rebecca J. Passonneau (Columbia University)
Marta Recasens Potau (Universitat de Barcelona)
Sameer Pradhan (BBN Technologies)
Rashmi Prasad (University of Pennsylvania)
James Pustejovsky (Brandeis University)
Arndt Riester (IMS Universität Stuttgart)
Kepa Rodriguez (University of Trento)
Anna Rumshisky (Brandeis University)
Manfred Stede (Universität Potsdam)
Marc Verhagen (Brandeis University)
Theresa Wilson (University of Edinburgh)
Andreas Witt (Universität Tübingen)