In MWE'09 we are interested in the overall process of dealing with MWEs, asking for original research related (but not limited) to the following four fundamental topics.

(1) Identification. Identification is a major problem for MWEs. The MWE identification task is to determine whether a MWE is used non-compositionally (figuratively) or compositionally (literally) in a particular context. The identification of MWEs by automated means is a difficult task, as it does not suffice to store the MWE into a dictionary database. Rule-based (morphosyntactic rules) and/or statistical approaches may be needed to identify MWEs in context.

(2) Interpretation. Semantic interpretation of MWEs, particularly noun compounds and determinerless prepositional phrases, is the task of determining the implicit semantic relation holding between the MWE's sub-components. This specific area is inviting research on (linguistically) identifying the semantic relations (SRs) and automatic SR interpretation in MWEs. The relation inventories used can be of different granularity and dependent on the particular type of MWE construction. In some cases, MWE's semantics can be also specified in terms of a suitable paraphrase.

(3) Disambiguation. Disambiguation (Semantic classification) is the task of specifying the semantics of MWEs based on an inventory of semantic relations. It tends to presuppose the ability to classify the (degree of) compositionality of MWEs and applies only to compositional MWEs. The aim is to specify the semantics of MWEs in terms of predefined semantic categories, e.g., in WordNet.

(4) Applications. Identifying MWEs in context and understanding their syntax and semantics is important for many natural language applications, including but not limited to question answering, machine translation, information retrieval, information extraction, and textual entailment. Still, despite the growing research interest, there are not enough successful applications in real NLP problems, which we believe is the key for the advancement of the field.

Submissions must describe substantial, original, and unpublished work. Submissions will be judged on correctness, originality, technical strength, significance and relevance to the conference, and interest to the attendees. Full papers may consist of up to eight (8) pages in total (references icluded) and will be presented orally. The deadline for paper submission is May 1, 2009 (GMT + 8).
The official style files for ACL/IJCNLP 2009 are available at: http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org/main/authors/stylefiles/. The workshop submissions should use the same formatting guidelines.

Important dates

Paper submission deadline May 1, 2009
Notification of acceptance of papers June 1, 2009
Camera-ready copies due June 7, 2009
ACL-IJCNLP 2009 Workshops August 6-7, 2009

Programme committee

* Inaki Alegria, University of the Basque Country (Spain)
* Timothy Baldwin, Stanford University (USA); University of Melbourne (Australia)
* Colin Bannard, Max Planck Institute (Germany)
* Francis Bond, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (Japan)
* Gael Dias, Beira Interior University (Portugal)
* Ulrich Heid, Stuttgart University (Germany)
* Stefan Evert, University of Osnabrueck (Germany)
* Afsaneh Fazly,University of Toronto (Canada)
* Nicole Gregoire,University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
* Roxana Girju,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
* Kyo Kageura, University of Tokyo (Japan)
* Brigitte Krenn, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Austria)
* Eric Laporte, University of Marne-la-Vall?e (France)
* Rosamund Moon, University of Birmingham (UK)
* Diana McCarthy, University of Sussex (UK)
* Jan Odijk, University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
* Stephan Oepen, Stanford University (USA); University of Oslo (Norway)
* Darren Pearce, London Knowledge Lab (UK)
* Pavel Pecina, Charles University (Czech Republic)
* Scott Piao, University of Manchester (UK)
* Violeta Seretan, University of Geneva (Switzerland)
* Suzanne Stevenson, University of Toronto (Canada)
* Stan Szpakowicz, University of Ottawa (Canada)
* Beata Trawinski, University of Tuebingen (Germany)
* Peter Turney, National Research Council of Canada (Canada)
* Kiyoko Uchiyama, Keio University (Japan)
* Begona Villada Moiron, University of Groningen (The Netherlands)
* Aline Villavicencio, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Workshop chairs

* Dimitra Anastasiou, Localisation Research Centre, Limerick University, Ireland
* Chikara Hashimoto, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan
* Preslav Nakov, National University of Singapore, Singapore
* Su Nam Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia

Contact

For any inquiries regarding the workshop please contact Dimitra Anastasiou (dimitra@d-anastasiou.com).