Proceedings of the eighth conference on European chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics -

This volume contains 63 papers, which were chosen from the 264 that were submitted to the ACL-EACL'97, one of the most selective international conferences of 1997.

Abstract

We are pleased to present you with this volume containing the papers accepted for presentation at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 8th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, July 7-12, 1997 at the Universidad Nacional de Educaci6n a Distancia (UNED) Madrid, Spain.In this, the first joint meeting of the American and European chapters of the Association for Computational Linguistics, you will find a wealth of high-quality papers, tutorials, and workshops on a wide range of topics related to natural language processing. This year's response to the Call for Papers was overwhelming - a 47% increase over the number of submissions to ACL'96. This dramatic increase in papers submitted indicates the field is thriving.This volume contains 63 papers, which were chosen from the 264 that were submitted to the conference. With an acceptance rate of 24%, ACL-EACL'97 is one of the most selective international conferences of 1997.This year, reviewing was conducted by a hierarchically structured program committee, consisting of five area chairs and 53 regular program committee members, supported by the invaluable assistance of 54 additional specialist reviewers. Their names are listed on the following pages. Reviewing was conducted blind, to all reviewers and area chairs.All papers that remained controversial for some reason - or for which reviewers indicated low confidence in their judgements - were explicitly discussed at the meeting of the PC Chairs and the Area Chairs on March 2, 1997 in Brighton.32 accepted papers come from North America (51%), 25 from Europe (40%) and 6 from Asia (9%). ACL-EACL 97 is a truely international conference: authors from 16 different countries contribute accepted papers. The top three contributing countries are: USA (29), Germany (9), and Japan (5).It is interesting to note that 20 papers (32%) were authored by reseachers working in industrial labs. This shows clearly the industrial and economic relevance of our field.There was an increase of papers (6) based on transatlantic collaboration between US researchers and researchers from Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Romania and the United Kingdom. This is a very encouraging trend that is certainly due to increased telecooperation based on the Intemet.The technical program will consist of two full tracks, and occasionally a third parallel session for student papers. Unfortunately, given space considerations, many very good papers could not be accepted. However, the substantial increase in submissions will undoubtedly cause future organizers to consider further changes in conference structure.In addition to the technical program, this year there are four tutorials, a record twelve workshops over two days, two student sessions with ten papers, numerous demonstrations, and book exhibits. We are also fortunate to have David Sadek from France Telecom and Nino Varile from the European Commission delivering invited addresses. David Sadek will speak about Rational Agency as the Basis for Natural Dialogue: The ARTIMIS Technology, and Nino Varile will discuss Current and Future EU Activities in the Field of Language Technologies.