In all specialized fields, knowledge is stored and disseminated in the form of documents. In some cases, document management (ranking according to relevance to a query, for instance) and acquisition and extraction of knowledge for indexing, modelling and conceptualization rely on terminological and linguistic studies. Hence, terminology and linguistics supply key concepts to other disciplines such as natural language processing, information science and knowledge engineering. Conversely, these disciplines bring to light new problems and issues and present new challenges and perspectives for terminology and linguistics. For nearly 15 years, TIA conferences have provided a forum for researchers working in these various fields to come together. The 2009 TIA Conference will focus mainly - although not exclusively - on terms and terminological systems. Terms are used as focal points for knowledge structuring in many applications, including ontologies, thesauri, and other conventional terminological resources such as specialized dictionaries and terminological databases. A number of semantic relations between terms may be identified (and may vary depending on the application). However, although the aim of all of these applications is a certain degree of stability, the linguistic nature of terms and of the relations they share raises many questions. Which relations should be represented in specific applications? How should terms and the relations between them be represented? How can the relations in terminological resources and their linguistic representation in texts be linked? Submitted papers may address theoretical or methodological issues. Interdisciplinary work that focuses on collaboration between disciplines when dealing with terminological issues is strongly encouraged.
Topics Proposals addressing the theme “Terms and terminological systems” are strongly encouraged. However, other proposals dealing with innovative theoretical, methodological, or practical questions are also welcome. Possible topics include:
Semantic theories and terminology in relation to text linguistics and ontologies (especially theoretical linguistic approaches to describing terms and terminological structures) Representation of terms and semantic or conceptual relations in specific types of data structures (ontologies, thesauri, etc.) Representation of terms and semantic or conceptual relations in multilingual applications Comparative studies of terminologies / terminological resources / ontological resources from different languages, communities or time frames Theoretical and technical problems in automated or manual compilation of terminologies using mono- or multi-lingual corpora Methods for automatic terminology structuring (identification of relations between terms, linking of terms to specific fields of knowledge) Studies on the relationships between ontologies and terminologies and/or thesauri: o Use of terminologies to compile and structure ontologies o Use of ontological modelling for a better understanding of the semantics of thesauri and terminologies •
Evaluation methods and criteria, and validation of terminologies Problems in compiling multilingual terminologies Reuse, standardization, comparison and merging of terminological or ontological resources.
Applications of terminological resources (the Semantic Web, information retrieval, technology watch, question answering, document management, ranking and/or classification, etc.) The TIA group (http://tia.loria.fr/) founded this conference series in 1995. The first conference took place in Paris (TIA’95, Villetaneuse), and subsequent events have been held in a variety of French cities (TIA’97 (Toulouse), TIA’99 (Nantes), TIA’01 (Nancy), TIA’03 (Strasbourg), TIA’05 (Rouen), and TIA ’07 (Nice)). Created under the auspices of AFIA (l’Association française pour l’intelligence artificielle; French Association for Artificial Intelligence) – which has since become the AFIA/GdR-I3 group – TIA brings together researchers in linguistics, natural language processing and knowledge engineering. The TIA group is responsible for the organization and the management of the 2009 TIA conference. Submissions will be reviewed by an international program committee composed of experts in the above fields (with each paper evaluated by three reviewers) and may be accepted as full papers or posters.