4th intl colloquium on grammatical inference ( icgl ) final call for papers http : / / www . cs . iastate . edu / ~ icgi98 / icgi98 . html fourth international colloquium on grammatical inference ( icgi-98 ) program co - chairs : vasant honavar and giora slutzki iowa state university july 12-14 , 1998 iowa state university ames , iowa , usa . cosponsored by international institute of theoretical and applied physics iowa state university and in cooperation with american association for artificial intelligence ieee systems , man , and cybernetics society acl special interest group on natural language learning introduction grammatical inference , variously refered to as automata induction , grammar induction , and automatic language acquisition , refers to the process of learning of grammars and languages from data . machine learning of grammars finds a variety of applications in syntactic pattern recognition , adaptive intelligent agents , diagnosis , computational biology , systems modelling , prediction , natural language acquisition , data mining and knowledge discovery . traditionally , grammatical inference has been studied by researchers in several research communities including : information theory , formal languages , automata theory , language acquisition , computational linguistics , machine learning , pattern recognition , computational learning theory , neural networks , etc . perhaps one of the first attempts to bring together researchers working on grammatical inference for an interdisciplinary exchange of research results took place under the aegis of the first colloquium on grammatical inference held at the university of essex in united kingdom in april 1993 . this was followed by the ( second ) international colloquium on grammatical inference , held at alicante in spain , the proceedings of which were published by springer - verlag as volume 862 of the lectures notes in artificial intelligence , and the third international colloquium on grammatical inference , held at montpellier in france , the proceedings of which were published by springer - verlag as volume 1147 of the lecture notes in artificial intelligence . following the success of these events and the workshop on automata induction , grammatical inference , and language acquisition , held in conjunction with the international conference on machine learning at nashville in united states in july 1997 , the fourth international colloquium on grammatical inference will be held from july 12 through july 14 , 1998 , at iowa state university in united states . topics of interest the conference seeks to provide a forum for presentation and discussion of original research papers on all aspects of grammatical inference including , but not limited to : * different models of grammar induction : e . g . , learning from examples , learning using examples and queries , incremental versus non-incremental learning , distribution-free models of learning , learning under various distributional assumptions ( e . g . , simple distributions ) , impossibility results , complexity results , characterizations of representational and search biases of grammar induction algorithms . * algorithms for induction of different classes of languages and automata : e . g . , regular , context-free , and context-sensitive languages , interesting subsets of the above under additional syntactic constraints , tree and graph grammars , picture grammars , multi-dimensional grammars , attributed grammars , parameterized models , etc . * theoretical and experimental analysis of different approaches to grammar induction including artificial neural networks , statistical methods , symbolic methods , information-theoretic approaches , minimum description length , and complexity-theoretic approaches , heuristic methods , etc . * broader perspectives on grammar induction - - e . g . , acquisition of grammar in conjunction with language semantics , semantic constraints on grammars , language acquisition by situated agents and robots , acquisition of language constructs that describe objects and events in space and time , developmental and evolutionary constraints on language acquisition , etc . * demonstrated or potential applications of grammar induction in natural language acquisition , computational biology , structural pattern recognition , information retrieval , text processing , adaptive intelligent agents , systems modelling and control , and other domains . program committee technical program chairs : vasant honavar and giora slutzki , iowa state university , usa . technical program committee : r . berwick , mit , usa a . brazma , european bioinformatics institute , cambridge , uk . m . brent , johns hopkins university , usa c . cardie , cornell university , usa w . daelemans , tilburg university , netherlands d . dowe , monash university , australia p . dupont , univ . st . etienne , france . d . estival , university of melbourne , australia j . feldman , international computer science institute , berkeley , usa l . giles , nec research institute , princeton , usa j . gregor , university of tennessee , usa c . de la higuera , lirmm , france a . itai , technion , israel t . knuutila , university of turku , finland j . koza , stanford university , usa k . lang , nec research institute , princeton , usa . m . li , university of waterloo , canada e . makinen , university of tampere , finland l . miclet , enssat , lannion , france . g . nagaraja , indian institute of technology , bombay , india h . ney , university of technology , aachen , germany j . nicolas , irisa , france r . parekh , allstate research and planning center , menlo park , usa l . pitt , university of illinois at urbana - champaign , usa d . powers , flinders university , australia l . reeker , national science foundation , usa y . sakakibara , tokyo denki university , japan . c . samuelsson , lucent technologies , usa a . sharma , university of new south wales , australia . e . vidal , u . politecnica de valencia , spain local arrangements committee dale grosvenor , iowa state university , usa . k . balakrishnan , iowa state university , usa . r . bhatt , iowa state university , usa j . yang , iowa state university , usa . conference format and proceedings the conference will include oral and possibly poster presentations of accepted papers , a small number of tutorials and invited talks . all accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings to be published by a major publisher . ( negotiations are underway with springer - verlag regarding the publication of icgi-98 proceedings as a volume in their lecture notes in artificial intelligence a subseries of the lecture notes in computer science ) . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - submission of papers postscript versions of the papers , no more than 12 pages long , ( including figures , tables , and references ) , should be submitted electronically to icgi98 - submissions @ cs . iastate . edu . accepted papers will be allocated 12 pages in the proceedings ( long papers ) or 6 pages in the proceedings ( short papers ) . in those rare instances where authors might be unable to submit postscript versions of their papers electronically , we will try to accomodate them . each paper will be rigorously refereed by at least 2 reviewers for technical soundness , originality , and clarity of presentation . deadlines the relevant schedule for paper submissions is as follows : * march 20 , 1998 . deadline for receipt of manuscripts * april 21 , 1998 . notification of acceptance * may 1 , 1998 . camera ready copies due submission of proposals for tutorials the conference will include a small number of short ( 2 - hour ) tutorials on selected topics in grammatical inference . some examples of possible tutorial topics are : hidden markov models , computational biology applications , and pac learnability of grammars . this list is meant only to be suggestive and not exhaustive . those interested in presenting a a tutorial should submit a proposal ( in plain text format ) to icgi-submissions @ cs . iastate . edu by electronic mail : * a brief abstract ( 300 words or less ) describing the topics to be covered * a brief description of the target audience and their expected background * a brief curriculum vitae including the proposer 's relevant qualifications and publications the relevant schedule for tutorials is as follows : * march 1 , 1998 . deadline for receipt of tutorial proposals * april 1 , 1998 . notification of acceptance * may 1 , 1998 . tutorial notes due financial support limited financial support might be available , subject to the availability of funds , for : * scientists ( especially junior researchers ) from developing countries , especially for those who can find other sources of support for extended visit at a us institution * graduate students and postdocs from us institutions additional details will be posted as they become available .