1] 
                 The Second Workshop on Treebanks and 
                    Linguistic Theories (TLT 2003) 
                  14-15 November 2003, Växjö, Sweden 
  

Workshop motivation and aims 

Treebanks are a language resource that provides annotations of natural 
languages at various levels of structure: at the word level, the phrase 
level, the sentence level, and sometimes also at the level of 
function-argument structure. Treebanks have become crucially important for 
the development of data-driven approaches to natural language processing, 
human language technologies, grammar extraction and linguistic research in 
general. There are a number of on-going projects on compilation of 
representative treebanks for languages that still lack them (Bulgarian, 
Danish, Portugese, Spanish, Turkish) and a number of on-going projects on 
compilation of treebanks for specific purposes for languages that already 
have them (English). 

The practices of building syntactically processed corpora have proved that 
aiming at more detailed description of the data becomes more and more 
theory-dependent (Prague Dependency Treebank and other dependency-based 
treebanks such as the Danish dependendency treebank, the Italian treebank 
(TUT), and the Turkish treebank (METU); Verbmobil HPSG Treebanks, Polish 
HPSG Treebank, Bulgarian HPSG-based Treebank, etc.).  Therefore the 
development of treebanks and formal linguistic theories need to be more 
tightly connected in order to ensure the necessary information flow between 
them. 

This series of workshops aims at being a forum for researchers and advanced 
students working in these areas. The second workshop will be held in Växjö, 
Sweden, 14-15 november 2003. (The first was held in Sozopol, Bulgaria in 
September 2002; see http://www.bultreebank.org/Proceedings.html). 

Topics of interest 

We invite submission of papers on topics relevant to treebanks and 
linguistic theories, including but not limited to: 

- design principles and annotation schemes for treebanks; 
- applications of treebanks in acquiring linguistic knowledge and NLP; 
- the role of linguistic theories in treebank development; 
- treebanks as a basis for linguistic research; 
- evaluation of treebanks; 
- tools for creation and management of treebanks; 
- standards for treebanks. 

Important dates 

Deadline for workshop abstract submission 
1 August 2003 

Notification of acceptance 
15 September 2003 

Final version of paper for workshop proceedings 
15 October 2003 

Submissions 

Papers should describe existing research connected to the topics of the 
workshop. The presentation at the workshop will be 25 minutes long (20 
minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for questions and discussion). Each 
submission should include: title; author(s); affiliation(s); and contact 
author's e-mail address, postal address, telephone and fax numbers. Extended 
abstracts (maximum 1500 words, plain-text format or Postscript) should be 
sent to: 

Name: Joakim Nivre 
Email: nivre@msi.vxu.se 

Those who wish to attend without offering a paper are asked to briefly 
motivate their interest, as the number of participants is limited. 

The final version of the accepted papers should not be longer than 12 A4 
pages. Instructions for formatting and presentation of the final version 
will be sent to authors upon notification of acceptance. 

Program committee 

Jens Allwood, Sweden 
Lars Borin, Sweden 
Helge Dyvik, Norway 
Eva Ejerhed, Sweden 
Tomaz Erjavec, Slovenia 
Erhard Hinrichs, Germany (co-chair) 
Janne Bondi Johannessen, Norway 
Sabine Kirchmeier-Andersen, Denmark 
Sandra Kübler, Germany 
Torbjørn Nordgård, Norway 
Joakim Nivre, Sweden (co-chair) 
Kemal Oflazer, Turkey 
Karel Oliva, Austria 
Petya Osenova, Bulgaria 
Vladimir Petkevic, Czech Republic 
Adam Przepi'orkowski, Poland 
Laurent Romary, France 
Eirikur Rögnvaldsson, Iceland 
Kiril Simov, Bulgaria 
Martin Volk, Sweden 

Invited speakers 

Thorsten Brants, Google Inc. 
Stephan Oepen, Stanford University 

Sponsoring organisations 

Nordic Treebank Network (Nordic Language Technology Program 020528) 
Special Resarch Program "Linguistic Data Structures" (SFB 441) at the 
University of Tübingen 
Växjö University 

Local organisation 

Joakim Nivre (joakim.nivre@msi.vxu.se) 
Johan Hall (johan.hall@msi.vxu.se) 
Jens Nilsson (jens.nilsson@msi.vxu.se) 

Växjö University 
School of Mathematics and Systems Engineering 
SE-35195 Växjö 

http://www.msi.vxu.se/~rics/TLT2003/