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Invitation to join webinar: "Breaking ground: Discussing the present and the future of Data-driven learning" - December 4
by PASCUAL FRANCISCO PEREZ PAREDES 21 Nov '23

21 Nov '23

Breaking ground: Discussing the present and the future of Data-driven learning – Online seminar December 4, 2023, 10:00 - 13:00 This online seminar aims to provide a stage for new voices to share their experiences on DDL research and their vision for its development. It is the result of a collaboration between the ATILF/University of Lorraine and the University of Murcia to bring together current and innovative research from current and future specialists in DDL . The webinar will take place on 4th December 2023 and it will consist of a 2-hour session in which early-career researchers will present their novel takes on DDL, followed by a 1-hour roundtable with experienced researchers (Alex Boulton-U. Lorraine, Elisa Corino-U. Torino and Pascual Pérez-Paredes -U. Murcia) and everyone involved in the webinar. Click below to register. It’s free. https://umurcia.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DuBwB0RnSUGzGfsxJ2i8jw#/registr… For speakers and more details: https://www.um.es/languagecorpora/breaking-ground/ Pascual Pérez-Paredes https://webs.um.es/pascualf/<https://webs.um.es/pascualf/miwiki/doku.php>

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Deadline approaching: Assistant/associate professor in NLP, ITU Copenhagen
by Christian Hardmeier 20 Nov '23

20 Nov '23

Assistant/Associate Professor in Natural Language Processing IT University of Copenhagen Application deadline: 26 November 2023 The computer science department at the IT University of Copenhagen is recruiting a new faculty member to join the natural language processing group. Candidates from any background and all areas of natural language processing are very welcome to apply! ITU is a small university with a motivated and engaged student community in Copenhagen, a city that consistently ranks as one of the most livable places in the world. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me: chrha(a)itu.dk<mailto:chrha@itu.dk> More information and application link in the official job posting: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx?cid=119&ProjectId=181… Website of the NLP group at ITU: https://nlpnorth.github.io/ -- Christian Hardmeier, Associate Professor – https://christianhardmeier.rax.ch/ IT University of Copenhagen, Department of Computer Science

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Second Call for Papers: The 18th Linguistic Annotation Workshop
by Sophie Henning 18 Nov '23

18 Nov '23

***Second Call for Papers*** **Overview** Submission page: https://softconf.com/eacl2024/LAW-XVIII/ Website: https://sigann.github.io/LAW-XVIII-2024/ E-mail: law-xviii-2024(a)googlegroups.com **Workshop Description** LAW-XVIII will be the 18th annual meeting endorsed by the ACL Special Interest Group for Annotation (SIGANN). It will take place in March 2024 at EACL in St. Julians, Malta. Linguistic annotation of natural language corpora is the backbone of supervised methods in both statistical and neural natural language processing. Annotated corpora are also a major supporting source of information for unsupervised methods, multitask learning, and evaluation of both NLP tools and theories about language within and outside of linguistics. The LAW-XVIII will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of innovative research on all aspects of linguistic annotation, including 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, semi-supervised “human in the loop” methods of annotation, crowd-sourcing approaches, and more. The LAW will also provide a forum for annotation researchers to work towards standardization, best practices, and interoperability of annotation information and software. In line with the EACL main conference, LAW will be hybrid, allowing both in-person and virtual presentations. **Special Theme** The special theme of LAW-XVIII is “Annotation in the Age of Large Language Models (LLMs).” In addition to LAW’s general topics, we specifically invite submissions on the following topics: - Comparison of linguistically annotated datasets vs. datasets created using large language models. Potential topics include: - Comparison of models that have been trained on the respective datasets - Impact of data size of manually annotated resources already available prior to dataset creation with LLMs - Is synthetic dataset creation a viable option for non-standard domains, e.g., the medical domain, where expert knowledge is required? - Non-performance-related considerations of manual vs. synthetic dataset creation (e.g., explainability) - Impact and prevention of test dataset contamination in LLM training - Usefulness of LLMs for linguistic research (in relation to annotation). - Any other topics related to the special theme. **Submissions** We accept both direct submissions and commitments from ACL Rolling Review (ARR). We welcome submissions of long and short papers, posters, and demonstrations relating to the special theme or any aspect of linguistic annotation, including: - Annotation procedures - Innovative automated and manual strategies for annotation - Machine learning and knowledge-based methods for automation of corpus annotation - Creation, maintenance, and interactive exploration of annotation structures and annotated data - Annotation evaluation - Inter-annotator agreement and other evaluation metrics and strategies - Qualitative evaluation of linguistic representations - Innovative means to evaluate annotation quality - Annotation access and use - Representation formats/structures for annotations of different phenomena, especially annotations at multiple levels, and means to explore/manipulate them - Linguistic considerations for merging annotations of distinct phenomena - Annotation schemes, guidelines and standards - New and innovative annotation schemes, comparison of annotation schemes - Methodologies and resources for annotation scheme development - 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 - Results from the application and evaluation of standards for linguistic annotation - Annotation software and frameworks - Development, evaluation and/or innovative use of annotation software frameworks Submissions should report original and unpublished research on topics of interest to the workshop. We also invite substantiated position papers, in particular with regard to our special theme. Accepted papers are expected to be presented at the workshop and will be published in the workshop proceedings. They should emphasize obtained results rather than intended work, and should indicate clearly the state of completion of the reported results. A paper accepted for presentation at the workshop must not be or have been presented at any other meeting with publicly available proceedings. Long/short paper submissions must use the official ACL style templates. Long papers must not exceed eight (8) pages of content. Short papers and demonstration papers must not exceed four (4) pages of content. References do not count against these limits. Note: The supplementary material does not count towards page limit and should not be included in the paper, but should be submitted separately using the appropriate field on the submission website. All submissions must be in PDF format. Reviewing of papers will be double-blind. Therefore, the paper must not include the authors’ names and affiliations or self-references that reveal the authors’ identity--e.g., "We previously showed (Smith, 1991) ..." should be replaced with citations such as "Smith (1991) previously showed ...". Papers that do not conform to these requirements will be rejected without review. Authors of papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or publications must provide this information to the workshop co-chairs (law-xviii-2024(a)googlegroups.com). Authors of accepted papers must notify the program chairs within 10 days of acceptance if the paper is withdrawn for any reason. We follow previous and current ACL policy to establish an anonymity period (from submission to author notification) during which non-anonymous posting of preprints is not allowed. Also included in that policy are instructions to reviewers to not rate papers down for not citing recent preprints. Authors are asked to cite published versions of papers instead of preprint versions when possible. Papers can be submitted at https://softconf.com/eacl2024/LAW-XVIII/. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the program co-chairs via e-mail or check the workshop website (https://sigann.github.io/LAW-XVIII-2024/) for updates. **Dates** (All submission deadlines are 11:59 p.m. UTC-12:00 “anywhere on Earth”) Anonymity period starts: November 18, 2023 Submission of long and short papers: December 18, 2023 ARR Commitment deadline: January 17, 2024 Notification of acceptance: January 20, 2024 Camera-ready papers due: January 30, 2024 Workshop: March 21 or 22, 2024 **Workshop Organizers** Manfred Stede (Program Co-Chair) Sophie Henning (Program Co-Chair) Amir Zeldes (ACL SIGANN President) Ines Rehbein (ACL SIGANN Secretary)

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Invitation to the 1st Linguistics Biennial Conference (Kuwait University)
by lsbc＠ku.edu.kw 17 Nov '23

17 Nov '23

Dear all, I am delighted to invite you to The 1st Linguistics Studies Biennial Conference (LSBC 2024), organised by the Department of English Language and Literature (DELL) at Kuwait University, Kuwait. The conference will take place on March 4-5, 2024. The theme of the conference is " Current trends in applied linguistic research: corpus and AI perspectives". The conference aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and educators from various disciplines and fields related to applied linguistics, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language policy, and intercultural communication. LSBC’s keynote speakers are: 1. Professor Stefan TH. Gries 2. Professor Jukka Tyrkko 3. Dr Teresa Lynn 4. Dr Robbie Love 5. Dr Tobias Bernaisch If you are registering as an attendee, kindly follow this link: https://forms.office.com/r/ashhu17hsP In order to participate, please email your paper, abstract, or research findings to: lsbc(a)ku.edu.kw Venue: The Pearl at Kuwait University Submission deadline: 10 December 2023 Announcement of accepted talks: 2 January 2024 By accepting this invitation, you have the opportunity to showcase your knowledge and expertise to a wider audience. As renowned scholars and experts in your fields, we believe that your insights and perspectives will greatly enrich the conference and inspire the participants. If you are interested in participating in our upcoming conference, please take a moment to submit your papers or abstracts. Your contributions are highly encouraged. Furthermore, I kindly request that you share the information regarding the conference with your network. You can send it through your academic channels, such as email lists, social media groups, or academic journals, to ensure that as many colleagues and students as possible are aware of the opportunity. Sharing the website link and our Twitter account would be very helpful in increasing the visibility of LSBC 2024. X (Twitter) account: @lsbcatdell Website: http://kuweb.ku.edu.kw/ICL/index.htm I look forward to hearing from you soon and hope that you will join us at LSBC 2024. If you have any questions or require any further information, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you for your cooperation. Best regards, Dr Mohammad Alenezi Conference Chair

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Postdoc in cognitive modelling of language processing at Saarland University
by Vera Demberg 17 Nov '23

17 Nov '23

2-year postdoctoral position We are inviting applications for one postdoctoral position (funding available until 01/2026, start date flexible; contract renewal may be possible afterwards) of a computer scientist, cognitive scientist, computational linguist or psycholinguist, who has experience with or interest in experimental research and/or cognitive modelling for language processing (e.g., Bayesian models, and/or models using cognitive architectures like ACT-R; the use of LLMs and their combination with cognitive architectures will also be explored). The position will be funded as part of the ERC Starting Grant "Individualized Interaction in Discourse" of Prof. Vera Demberg, at Saarland University. The goal of the position is to develop models that capture individual differences in discourse and pragmatic processing. The candidate will conduct research on the design and implementation of psycholinguistic experiments and/or cognitive models of language processing at the level of discourse and/or pragmatic processing. These models should capture individual differences in cognition such as working memory, language experience, background knowledge, theory-of-mind abilities etc. The successful applicant must have excellent spoken and written proficiency in English, and have a background in natural language processing or cognitive modelling. This is a position on the German TV-L E13 scale (100% position at the postdoc level). The starting salary of a 100% TV-L E13 position is a bit over 50,000 Euros per year and increases with experience. The initial appointment will be for three years; the position can be extended up to the limits of the German law for academic contracts (WissZeitVG). The starting date is January 2024 or later; we would be willing to adapt to the time requirements of an ideal candidate. About the research environment Saarland University is one of the leading centers for computational linguistics and computer science in Europe, and offers a dynamic and stimulating research environment. The Department of Language Science and Technology consists of about 100 research staff in nine research groups in the fields of computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, speech processing, and corpus linguistics. Saarland University is one of the leading centres for computer science and computational linguistics in Europe, and offers a dynamic and stimulating research environment. The group is affiliated with both the Department of Computer Science, with the Department of Language Science and Technology and with the MPI for Informatics. The department is a core member of the new Research Training Group "Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision, and Action", which is on track to grow into one of the largest centers for research on neurosymbolic models in NLP and other fields of AI in the world. It is also the centerpiece of the Collaborative Research Center 1102 "Information Density and Linguistic Encoding" and part of the Saarland Informatics Campus, which brings together computer science research at the university with world-class research institutions on campus, such as the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). The Saarland Informatics Campus brings together 900 researchers and 2100 students from 81 countries; SIC faculty have won 36 ERC grants. Saarland University is located in Saarbrücken, a mid-sized city in the tri-border area of Germany, France, and Luxembourg. Saarbrücken combines a lively culture scene with a relaxed atmosphere, and is quite an affordable place to live in. Our department maintains an international and diverse work environment. The primary working language is English; learning German while you are here will make it easier to connect with the local culture, but is not necessary for your work. How to apply Please submit your application by email to applications-vd(a)lst.uni-saarland.de. Preference will be given to applications received by *6 December 2023*. Please quote opening number W2403 in your application materials. Include a single PDF file with the following information: • a statement of research interests that motivates why you are applying for this position and outlines your research agenda; • a full CV including your list of publications; • scans of transcripts and academic degree certificates; • the names, affiliations, and e-mail addresses of two people who can provide letters of reference for you. Saarland University especially welcomes applications from women and people with disabilities. If you have further questions, please email Vera Demberg <demberg(a)lst.uni-saarland.de>.

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Postdoctoral position in natural language processing, Univ. Lorraine, Nancy, France
by Mathieu Constant 17 Nov '23

17 Nov '23

The Research unit ATILF (Computer Processing and Analysis of the French Language) offers a postdoctoral position in natural language processing (NLP). Topic: Discovery of multiword expressions, their meaning and their linguistic properties in texts using large language models Location: ATILF, Nancy, France Starting date: from February 2024 Duration: 12 months (possibility to extend the duration for one more year) Supervisors: Mathieu Constant (Univ. Lorraine, France) and Agata Savary (Univ. Paris-Saclay, France) Salary: depends on experience after PhD and salary grids, from 3070 (<2-year experience) to 4465 euros (>7-year-experience) before tax Application deadline: 5th December 2023 Subject. The term « multiword expression » refers to a combination of multiple lexical items that displays irregular composition possibly on different linguistic levels (morphology, syntax, semantics, …). They include a large variety of phenomena such as idioms (run around in circles), support verb constructions (take a walk), nominal compounds (dry run), complex function units (in spite of). They have been the subject of extensive research work in the NLP community over the last 50 years. The goal of this post-doc position is to investigate new methods for discovering multiword expressions, their meaning and their linguistic properties in texts, in order to enrich an induced semantic lexicon with new multiword entries, definitions, argumental structure, and other properties. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLM) opens new promising perspectives for multiword expressions, not only regarding their semantic compositionality but also their linguistic characterization. The methods will be primarily experimented on French, but other languages are also possible. Context. The position is part of the SELEXINI project (https://selexini.lis-lab.fr <https://selexini.lis-lab.fr/>, 2022-2026) funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). The goal of the SELEXINI project is to develop next-generation lexicon induction methods for natural language processing. The induced lexicons will not only cluster word usages according to their senses, but also contain multiword expressions, argumental structure, generated definitions, etc, combining the power of large pre-trained language models and existing lexical resources to address the lack of interpretability and diversity in current language technology. The hired researcher will be fully integrated in the project team. Requirements. Applicants should hold a PhD thesis in computer science, in applied mathematics, in natural language processing, or in computational linguistics. Applications from PhD students planning their defense by December 31st, 2023 are also welcome. The hired post-doc researcher should have the following skills: expertise in deep learning for NLP and notably large language models excellent programming skills good linguistic skills good knowledge of French would be a plus team spirit Application. The applicants should submit a cover letter, a CV including their publications, a list of references for recommendation, a transcript of Master grades, on the following official web site: https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR7118-SABMAR-017/Default.aspx?Lang=EN <https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR7118-SABMAR-017/Default.aspx?Lang=EN>. The applications should be submitted not later than December 5.

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Postdoc in NLP or psycholinguistics at Saarland University
by Vera Demberg 17 Nov '23

17 Nov '23

Research and teaching position at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany Start date: early 2024 Contract duration: 3 years (can be extended) Payscale: E13 100% (postdoc) We are looking to fill a research and teaching position in NLP or psycholinguistics at the at the research group of Prof. Vera Demberg. It offers great flexibility in developing your own research and teaching agenda, and collaborations with other research groups within the department of Language Science and Technology and/or at the department of Computer Science are encouraged. The position is flexible with respect to topic, but it should connect thematically with current topics of interest to the research group. These include neural natural language generation with specific focus on data-to-text generation, avoidance of hallucinations and personalized language generation, as well as computational models of discourse processing and pragmatics. Psycholinguistic experimental work within our group revolves around information-theoretic accounts of human language processing, as well as discourse processing and experimental pragmatics. We are especially interested in individual differences in discourse and pragmatic processing (see also our ERC project "Individualized Interaction in Discourse"). You should have expertise in neural and/or linguistically principled methods in NLP, or experimental methods for psycholinguistics. The position includes a teaching load of up to four hours per week and can be given within the BSc or MSc programs in Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Our study programs attract excellent and highly motivated students; it is not unusual for our students to publish papers at peer-reviewed conferences before graduation. The MSc students in particular are a very international crowd, with two thirds joining us from abroad. You will typically teach one seminar per semester on a topic of your choice, which will allow you to motivate students to do BSc and MSc theses under your supervision. This is a position on the German TV-L E13 scale (100% position at the postdoc level). The starting salary of a 100% TV-L E13 position is a bit over 50,000 Euros per year and increases with experience. The initial appointment will be for three years; the position can be extended up to the limits of the German law for academic contracts (WissZeitVG). The starting date is January 2024 or later; we would be willing to adapt to the time requirements of an ideal candidate. Requirements We are looking for candidates who have finished, or are about to complete, an excellent PhD degree in computational linguistics, computer science, psycholinguistics or a related discipline. You must be proficient in English (spoken and written). Applicants should have demonstrated their research expertise through high-quality publications. About the research environment Saarland University is one of the leading centers for computational linguistics and computer science in Europe, and offers a dynamic and stimulating research environment. The Department of Language Science and Technology consists of about 100 research staff in nine research groups in the fields of computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, speech processing, and corpus linguistics. The department is a core member of the new Research Training Group "Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision, and Action", which is on track to grow into one of the largest centers for research on neurosymbolic models in NLP and other fields of AI in the world. It is also the centerpiece of the Collaborative Research Center 1102 "Information Density and Linguistic Encoding" and part of the Saarland Informatics Campus, which brings together computer science research at the university with world-class research institutions on campus, such as the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). The Saarland Informatics Campus brings together 900 researchers and 2100 students from 81 countries; SIC faculty have won 36 ERC grants. Saarland University is located in Saarbrücken, a mid-sized city in the tri-border area of Germany, France, and Luxembourg. Saarbrücken combines a lively culture scene with a relaxed atmosphere, and is quite an affordable place to live in. Our department maintains an international and diverse work environment. The primary working language is English; learning German while you are here will make it easier to connect with the local culture, but is not necessary for your work. How to apply: Please submit your application by email to applications-vd(a)lst.uni-saarland.de. Preference will be given to applications received by 6 December 2023. Please cite opening number 2402 when sending in your application materials. Include a single PDF file with the following information: • a statement of research interests that motivates why you are applying for this position and outlines your research agenda; • a full CV including your list of publications; • scans of transcripts and academic degree certificates; • the names, affiliations, and e-mail addresses of two people who can provide letters of reference for you. Saarland University especially welcomes applications from women and people with disabilities. If you have further questions, please email Vera Demberg <demberg(a)lst.uni-saarland.de>.

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2nd CFP - Towards Ethical and Inclusive Conversational AI: Language Attitudes, Linguistic Diversity, and Language Rights (TEICAI) at EACL 2024 in Malta
by Nina Hosseini-Kivanani 17 Nov '23

17 Nov '23

Towards Ethical and Inclusive Conversational AI: Language Attitudes, Linguistic Diversity, and Language Rights (TEICAI) at EACL 2024 in Malta-March 17-22 2024. Workshop website: https://sites.google.com/view/teicai2024 Submission link: https://softconf.com/eacl2024/TEICAI-2024/ Conversational language technologies (chatbots, voice assistants, and multimodal conversational interfaces) are becoming increasingly complex and common in everyday life. Various language theories (such as speech act theory, politeness theory, conversation analysis, and interaction theory) have started influencing their development. At the same time, the development of these technologies is often driven by technology-related concerns and tends to overlook users’ needs and socio-cultural contexts. This combined with the scarcity of human rights regulation of AI, raises concerns about linguistic discrimination, exclusion, surveillance, and security risks. In addition, training data for conversational AI mostly comes from written rather than interaction-based language data sets and often does not include gestural, social, and emotional aspects that are fundamental to human interaction. In the same vein, Sign Language is rarely facilitated. To promote a positive impact of conversational technology on linguistic diversity and inclusion, it is imperative to strike a balance between technological concerns and socially relevant matters. Our workshop aims to address these issues by using a holistic approach that involves dialogue and collaboration among technologists, linguists, policymakers, and communities involved in the development and commissioning of conversational AI systems. To foster dialogue towards a multidisciplinary approach to the development of conversational AI that can better serve diverse global audiences, we welcome submissions on a range of topics related to language ideologies and language rights, in relation to conversational language technology and AI (e.g. chatbots, voice assistants, multimodal conversational interfaces). Possible topics may include: - Language ideologies in conversational AI - Language rights in conversational AI - Socio-cultural context in conversational AI - Language inclusion in training data for enhancing inclusivity - Incorporating non-verbal communication elements (gestures, emotions) in AI - Sign language and multimodal conversational AI - Audience design in conversational AI (tailoring systems to meet specific audiences’ needs and preferences) - The sense of human agency and identity while interacting with conversational AI - Addressing challenges and opportunities of conversational AI development (case studies, models of effective collaborations) - Linguistic discrimination in conversational AI - Perspectives of communities affected by conversational AI systems: needs, concerns, and expectations We invite authors to submit original, unpublished work (long, short, and position papers). Each submission will be reviewed by 2-3 members of the Programme Committee. Participants should format their submissions using the EACL template, available for LaTeX/Overleaf and all submissions must be in PDF format. All accepted papers (long, short, and position papers) will be included in the workshop proceedings. The proceedings will be published in the ACL anthology. Important dates: Workshop paper due: December 18, 2023 Direct Submission deadline (pre-reviewed ARR & main conference): January 17, 2024 Notification of acceptance: January 20, 2024 Camera-ready papers due: January 30, 2024 Proceedings due: February 7, 2024 Workshop dates: March 21-22, 2024 Organizers: Sviatlana Höhn, LuxAI, Luxembourg Nina Hosseini-Kivanani, Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Dimitra Anastasiou, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Luxembourg Angela Soltan, State University of Moldova, Moldova Bettina Migge, University College Dublin, Ireland Doris Dippold, University of Surrey, UK Fred Philippy, Zortify, Luxembourg Ekaterina Kamlovskaya, Translatables For any preliminary questions, you're welcome to reach out to teicai2024(a)gmail.com . You can follow us on LinkedIn (TEICAI) and Twitter (teicai2024) to get more updates about the workshop. On behalf of the organizers team Nina Hosseini-Kivanani University of Luxembourg

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Second CFP-Fourth Workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion (LT-EDI-2024) at EACL 2024-reg
by Bharathi Raja Asoka Chakravarthi 17 Nov '23

17 Nov '23

Apologies for cross posting *Fourth Workshop on Language Technology for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion (LT-EDI-2024) at EACL 2024* *Website link: https://sites.google.com/view/lt-edi-2024/ <https://sites.google.com/view/lt-edi-2024/>* Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is an important agenda across every field throughout the world. Language as a major part of communication should be inclusive and treat everyone with equality. Today’s large internet community uses language technology (LT) and has a direct impact on people across the globe. EDI is crucial to ensure everyone is valued and included, so it is necessary to build LT that serves this purpose. Recent results have shown that big data and deep learning are entrenching existing biases and that some algorithms are even naturally biased due to problems such as ‘regression to the mode’. Our focus is on creating LT that will be more inclusive of gender, racial, sexual orientation, persons with disability. The workshop will focus on creating speech and language technology to address EDI not only in English, but also in less resourced languages. The broader objective of LT-EDI-2024 will be - To investigate challenges related to speech and language resource creation for EDI. - To promote research in inclusive LT. - To adopt and adapt appropriate LT models to suit EDI. - To provide opportunities for researchers from the LT community around the world to collaborate with other researchers to identify and propose possible solutions for the challenges of EDI. Our workshop theme focuses on being more inclusive and providing a platform for researchers to create LT of a more inclusive nature. We hope that through these engagements we can develop LT tools to be more inclusive of everyone, including marginalized people. *Call for Papers:* Our main theme in this workshop is equality, diversity, and inclusivity in LT. We invite researchers and practitioners to submit papers reporting on these issues and datasets to avoid these issues. We also encourage qualitative studies related to these issues and how to avoid them. LT-EDI-2024 welcomes theoretical and practical paper submissions on any languages that contribute to research in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. We will particularly encourage studies that address either practical application or improving resources. *Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:* - Data set development to include EDI - Gender inclusivity in LT - LGBTQ+ inclusivity in LT - Racial inclusivity in LT - Persons with disability inclusivity in LT - Speech and language recognition for minority groups - Unconscious bias and how to avoid them in natural language processing, machine learning and other LT technologies. - Tackling rumours and fake news about gender, racial, and LGBTQ+ minorities. - Tackling discrimination against gender, racial, and LGBTQ+ minorities. Submissions: At LTEDI we accept the following submission types: - Long paper submissions must describe substantial, original, completed and unpublished work. Wherever appropriate, concrete evaluation and analysis should be included. Long papers may consist of up to 8 pages of content, plus unlimited pages for references and appendices. Upon acceptance, long papers will be given one additional page of content (i.e. up to 9 pages) in the proceedings so that reviewers’ comments can be taken into account. - Short paper submissions must describe original and unpublished work. Please note that a short paper is not a shortened long paper. Instead, short papers should have a point that can be made in a few pages. Short papers may consist of up to 4 pages of content, plus unlimited references and appendices. Upon acceptance, short papers will be given one additional page of content (i.e. up to 5 pages) in the proceedings so that reviewers’ comments can be taken into account. - Poster and demo submissions should be no longer than 4 pages (plus unlimited number of pages for references and ethics/broader impact statement). More information on submission can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/lt-edi-2024/submission For electronic submission of all papers, please use: https://openreview.net/group?id=eacl.org/EACL/2024/Workshop/LTEDI *Important Dates* - Workshop paper due: December 12, 2023 - Direct Submission deadline (pre-reviewed ARR & main conference) January 17, 2024 - Notification of acceptance: January 15, 2024 - Camera-ready papers due: January 25 2024 - Workshop dates: March 21-22, 2024 with regards, Dr. Bharathi Raja Chakravarthi, Assistant Professor / Lecturer-above-the-bar School of Computer Science, University of Galway, Ireland Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, Data Science Institute, University of Galway, Ireland E-mail: bharathiraja.akr(a)gmail.com , bharathi.raja(a)universityofgalway.ie <bharathiraja.asokachakravarthi(a)universityofgalway.ie> Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=irCl028AAAAJ&hl=en Website: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/our-research/people/bharathirajaasokachak…

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3 PhD positions on disagreement and meaning variation at the University of Utrecht
by d.p.nguyen＠uu.nl 16 Nov '23

16 Nov '23

** Job openings: PhD studentships on meaning variation in NLP ** Utrecht University, The Netherlands The Natural Language Processing (NLP) group in the Computing and Information Sciences department of Utrecht University (UU) is offering PhD positions in AI / NLP. Three four-year positions are available as part of the AiNed project “Dealing with Meaning Variation in NLP”, a collaboration between AI and Data Science and the Language Sciences Institute led by Prof. Massimo Poesio. The overall aim of the project is to allow NLP models to make better sense of variations in the ways that different speakers and readers interpret language. Positions are available to of the following projects: PhD PROJECT 1: Variation in coreference and reference Early research on learning from data with disagreement in Natural Language Processing (NLP) was often motivated by findings about anaaphoic reference - it turns out that often people disagree on what these pronouns mean, particularly in conversations. Methods for learning from data with disagreements (`learning from crowds’) have been successfully applied to other types of data containing disagreements, and substantial data sets containing multiple judgments on anaphoric reference now exist. But computational models of referring expression interpretation that can effectively learn from such data sets do not yet exist. Training co-reference models ‘from crowds’ has proven to be challenging, and there is no consensus over the question of how to test/evaluate interpretation models that take variation into account. This project will focus on addressing such challenges. It will also develop metrics that do justice to interpretative variation for co-reference, and use these metrics to test models. Ideally, the development of these metrics will be informed by cognitive and behavioural evidence on the processing of reference. For this project, we are looking for a motivated researcher with a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Computational Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Linguistics, or Statistics. A good mastery of deep learning and of NLP is essential. An understanding of coreference and discourse understanding would be a definite bonus. PhD PROJECT 2: Subjectivity in the detection of problematic language Variation in interpretation is particularly frequent with judgments that depend on an individual’s subjective biases, such as deciding whether a joke is funny or not. This PhD project focuses on NLP methods for subjective interpretive tasks with a high societal relevance, such as offensive/abusive language detection, used e.g., by social media platforms to identify cases of problematic use of language that can be harmful to people. Judgments on whether a given utterance is problematic are notoriously subjective, where differences between judges can have difficult cultural, ethnic, and racial overtones. The project will develop models for detecting problematic language that take into account the fact that the judgments involved can be controversial. For this project, we are looking for a motivated researcher with a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computational Cognitive Science, Computing Science, Computational Social Science, Linguistics, or Statistics. A good mastery of deep learning and of NLP is essential. An understanding of social science methodology would be a definite bonus. PhD PROJECT 3: Conflicting interpretations in dialogue In conversations, we produce language under time pressure. One of the effects of this time pressure is that less attention is paid ensuring that expressions can be interpreted univocally, resulting in misunderstandings that often go undetected. Such misunderstandings between dialogue partners cause problems for all aspects of NLP research. The first problem is that specifying that an expression was interpreted in one way by one participant and in another way by the other participant is difficult with present annotation methods. In turn, this makes it difficult to train models that can produce participant-specific interpretations and/or recognise disagreements in interpretation. In this project you will study misunderstandings in dialogue and how conversational agents can recognise and resolve them. For this project, we are looking for a motivated researcher with Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computational Cognitive Science, Computing Science, Conversational Agents, Linguistics, or Statistics. A good mastery of deep learning, of dialogue, and of conversational agents is essential. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO APPLY Further information about these vacancies can be found at: Project 1: https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs/phd-po… Project 2: https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs/phd-po… Project 3: https://www.uu.nl/en/organisation/working-at-utrecht-university/jobs/phd-po… The deadline for application is December 3rd 2023. We’re looking for someone to start as soon as possible after the recruitment process is concluded but we understand that it will normally take a few months before the candidate will be ready to start. Applications should be made through the University's site (see links above). CONTACTS For further information, please contact: - Prof. Massimo Poesio (m.poesio AT uu.nl) (all projects) - Project 1: Prof. Yoad Winter (y.winter AT uu.nl) - Project 2: Dr. Dong Nguyen (d.p.nguyen AT uu.nl) or Prof. Antal van der Bosch (a.p.j.vandenbosch AT uu.nl) - Project 3: Prof. Albert Gatt (a.gatt AT uu.nl) or Dr. Denis Paperno (d.paperno AT uu.nl)

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