Call for Papers IJCAI-99 Workshop NLP-2 KNOWLEDGE AND REASONING IN PRACTICAL DIALOGUE SYSTEMS Endorsed by SIGDIAL Applications utilizing spoken natural language interaction are becoming increasingly common, mainly due to the development of speech technology. In addition to speech recognition and speech synthesis these systems require dialogue capabilities that would allow users to be engaged in a natural and efficient interaction. For the sake of robustness and portability current practical dialogue systems tend to rely on simple models for dialogue management (e.g. state transition diagrams or dialogue grammars) and simple representations (if any) of domain or task knowledge (e.g. frames) and for certain applications, such as information retrieval from a database, these models actually appear to be sufficient. On the other hand, dialogue models developed within AI tend to emphasize the relation between utterances and speakers' goals and plans, the importance of being able to reason about other agents' beliefs and intentions, and the need for domain knowledge and discourse representation for resolving anaphoric and deictic references. Somewhere in between we also find proposals that either augment the simpler dialogue models with generic and specific domain knowledge, or restrict the role of plan inference to specific situations. The workshop aims at studying the need for knowledge and reasoning in dialogue systems from theoretical and practical perspectives. Besides the innovative aspect of research, an emphasis is also laid on the importance of implemented dialogue systems as test-beds for evaluating the usefulness of theories and ideas, and on improvements in practical system abilities supporting a more natural and efficient interaction. We primarily seek contributions which discuss one or more of the following issues: - What is the relation between different proposed knowledge sources, such as discourse models, task models, domain models, conceptual models and user models? - How are such models integrated and coordinated? - What are their roles in dialogue systems and how can they improve the analysis/generation of user/system utterances? - What types of knowledge and reasoning is useful for various kinds of applications and situations? - How can domain models and discourse models be used to handle focus and topic shifts? Do the models support topic associations in free conversations? - How dependent is the system's functioning on a particular domain model? Can modularity of a system be supported if its domain model is changed to a different one? - Can domain models be automatically built? How can empirical methods be used in building domain models? - How can we evaluate domain models and their importance to the dialogue systems? Participants ============ The workshop will be kept small, with a maximum of 40 participants. Preference will be given to active participants selected on the basis of their submitted papers. According to IJCAI rules, all workshop attendees must register for the main conference. Workshop format =============== Ample time is allowed for commenting on the papers and open group discussion, thus ensuring time for discussions that go beyond ordinary conference style commenting. The workshop is intended to be a genuinely interactive event and a forum where new ideas and insights can take form via the collaboration of experts with diverse backgrounds. Demonstration of software could be organised as part of the main IJCAI conference. Program comittee ================== Masahiro Araki, Kyoto University, Japan Rolf Carlson, KTH, Sweden Koiti Hasida, ETL, Japan Diane Litman, AT&T, USA Susan McRoy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA Massimo Poesio, University of Edinburgh, UK Mieke Rats, Compuleer, The Netherlands Norbert Reithinger, DFKI, Germany David Sadek, France Telecom, France David Traum, University of Maryland, USA Ingrid Zukerman, Monash University, Australia Submissions =========== Potential participants are invited to submit extended abstracts on the topics outlined above. Submissions should be no longer than 6 (six) pages exclusive of references, single spaced, and be in line with the IJCAI-style sheet, obtainable from http://www.dsv.su.se/ijcai-99/ Electronic submissions (in postscript format) should be sent to Jan Alexandersson at: jan.alexandersson@dfki.de Alternatively, three hard copies can be mailed to the corresponding address below. Jan Alexandersson DFKI GmbH Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 D-66123 Saarbruecken GERMANY The accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings which will be distributed to each participant. Further publication channels will be explored and decided at the workshop. Important dates =============== Electronic submission deadline: 1 March, 1999 Paper submission deadline: 3 March, 1999 Notification of acceptance: 23 April, 1999 Audio-visual requirements for accepted papers: 30 April 1999 Camera-ready paper for the workshop notes: 21 May, 1999 Workshop: 2 August, 1999 Organizing Committee ==================== Lars Ahrenberg (Co-chair) Department of Computer and Information Science Link"oping University S-581 83 Link"oping, Sweden tel: +46 13 282422 fax: +46 13 142231 email: lah@ida.liu.se Jan Alexandersson (Chair) German Research Institute of Computer Science, DFKI GmbH Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 66 123 Saarbr"ucken Germany tel: +49-681-3025347 fax: +49-681-3025341 email: jan.alexandersson@dfki.de Kristiina Jokinen (Co-chair) ATR Interpreting Telecommunications Research Laboratories 2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun Kyoto 619-0288 Japan tel: +81-774-95-1342 fax: +81-774-95-1308 email: kjokinen@itl.atr.co.jp Arne J"onsson (Co-chair) Department of Computer and Information Science Link"oping University S-581 83 Link"oping, Sweden tel: +46 13 281717 fax: +46 13 142231 email: arnjo@ida.liu.se Further information =================== Should you have any questions or need additional information on the workshop, please contact any of the organizing committee members by e-mail or at the addresses above. Further information on the IJCAI-99 conference, including updated information on hotel and travel information, can be obtained from the IJCAI home page at http://www.dsv.su.se/ijcai-99/ Updated information on this workshop and the final papers will be made available via the workshop home page: http://www.ida.liu.se/~nlplab/ijcai-ws.html