hovy@isi.edu (Eduard Hovy) (04/17/91)
IJCAI WORKSHOP Fully-Implemented Natural Language Understanding Systems The workshop is jointly organized by Kai von Luck (IBM Deutschland), Claus-Rainer Rollinger (Universitaet Osnabrueck) and Hans-Joachim Novak (IBM Deutschland) The outline of the workshop is as follows: A large set of theories have been proposed in recent years, covering one or more aspects of NL understanding systems. Little effort has been spent on integrating these theories into one system. Experiments involving the integration of different theories, e.g. unification-based analysis, DRT-based semantics, logic-based reasoning, analogical reasoning, and two-level morphology, have delivered interesting results. One of the major outcomes in this respect is that the game of `my component/theory is not responsible for that task/explanation/problem' cannot be played any more, instead a much broader view has to be taken as the deficits of the theories become apparent. The integration of several theories explicates their requirements and necessitates their revision. In this workshop we hope to bring together researchers of different disciplines within AI natural language understanding systems, e.g. text understanding systems, dialogue systems, knowledge-based machine translation systems, etc., to discuss the integration problems emphasi- zing a holistic view on natural language understanding. The major result of this workshop is expected to be the exchange and discussion of known deficits of today's theories that cover only certain aspects or phases of the NL understanding process as well as objectively collecting the requirements for these theories. This effort seems to be promising as can be observed by the existence of various experiments underway like, for instance, the text understanding system LILOG of IBM Germany as well as by recent trends of different areas of AI to move away from research on only intrinsic problems of a particular theory towards a more holistic view of NL understanding. NL systems will only have a future if our joint efforts are directed towards formulating theories that can be integrated to a full view of NL understanding. Intended Participants: Researchers of all areas of natural language understanding systems are invited to actively participate. Contributions should not cover a particular theory/explanation but rather RESULTS from integrating different theories into one single system. Reports which cover limitations of specific theories with respect to integration and/or concrete demands for the further development within theories are especially welcome. Please send a 3 to 5 page extended abstract by the 15th of May to Hans-Joachim Novak IBM Deutschland GmbH WT IWBS, 7000-75 Postfach 80 08 80 D-7000 Stuttgart 80 Germany e-mail: novak%ds0lilog.bitnet Please also send a hardcopy if you use e-mail. Notification of acceptance will be mailed by the end of May.