FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

CMNA IX - THE 9TH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL MODELS OF NATURAL
ARGUMENT  - To be held as an IJCAI-09 Workshop, 13 July 2009, Pasadena, CA

Organizers: Nancy Green (University of North Carolina Greensboro), Floriana
Grasso (University of Liverpool), Rodger Kibble (Goldsmiths College,
University of London), Chris Reed (University of Dundee)

The series of workshops on Computational Models of Natural Argument is
continuing to attract high quality submissions from researchers around the
world since its inception in 2001.  Like the past editions, CMNA09 acts to
nurture and provide succor to the ever growing community working in
"argument and computation". AI has witnessed a prodigious growth in uses of
argumentation throughout many of its subdisciplines: agent system
negotiation protocols that demonstrate higher levels of sophistication and
robustness; argumentation-based models of evidential relations; groupwork
tools that use argument to structure interaction and debate; computer-based
learning tools that exploit monological and dialogical argument structures
in designing pedagogic environments; decision support systems that build
upon argumentation theoretic models of deliberation to better integrate
with human reasoning.  The workshop focuses on the issue of modelling
"natural" argumentation.  Naturalness may involve the use of means which
are more visual than linguistic to illustrate a point, such as graphics or
multimedia.  Or to the use of more sophisticated rhetorical devices,
interacting at various layers of abstraction.  Or the exploitation of
"extra-rational" characteristics of the audience, taking into account
emotions and affective factors.  In particular, contributions will be
solicited addressing, but not limited to, the following areas of interest:

• The characteristics of  "natural" arguments: ontological aspects and
cognitive issues.
• The computational use of models  from informal logic and  argumentation
theory,
• The   linguistic  characteristics   of   natural  argumentation,
including   discourse markers,   sentence  format,   referring expressions,
and style.
• The  generation of natural argument
• Corpus argumentation results and techniques
• Models of natural legal argument
• Rhetoric  and  affect:  the  role  of  emotions,  personalities, etc. in
argumentation.
• The  roles   of  licentiousness  and  deceit   and  the  ethical
implications of implemented systems demonstrating such features.
• Natural argumentation in multi-agent systems.
• Methods  to better  convey  the structure  of complex  argument,
including representation and summarisation.
• Natural argumentation  and media: visual  arguments, multi-modal
arguments, spoken arguments.
• Evaluative arguments  and their application in  AI systems (such as
decision support and advice giving).
• Non-monotonic, defeasible and uncertain argumentation.
• Computer supported collaborative argumentation, for pedagogy, e-democracy
and public debate.
• Tools  for interacting  with structures  of  argument
• Applications  of  argumentation  based systems

6 March 2009: Deadline for long papers
1 April 2009: Deadline for short papers
17 April 2009: Notification of acceptance
8 May 2009: Deadline for final camera ready copy to workshop organizer
22 May 2009: Deadline for final copy

Program Committee (Tentative):

Leila Amgoud, IRIT, France
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, UK
Trevor Bench-Capon, University of Liverpool, UK
Tim Bickmore, Northeastern University, Boston, US
Guido Boella, University of Turin, Italy
Giuseppe Carenini, University of British Columbia, Canada
Tom Gordon, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin, Germany
Marco Guerini, ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy
Helmut Horacek, University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken Germany
Anthony Hunter, University College London, UK
Chris Mellish, University of Aberdeen, UK
David Moore, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
Fabio Paglieri, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy
Vincenzo Pallotta, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Cecile Paris, CSIRO, Australia
Paul Piwek, Open University, UK
Henry Prakken, University of Utrecht and University of Groningen, The
Netherlands
Ehud Reiter, University of Aberdeen, UK
Oliviero Stock, ITC-IRST, Trento, Italy
Doug Walton, University of Winnipeg, Canada
Adam Wyner, University of Liverpool, UK

Instructions for submitting papers and other information on CMNA will be
posted on the CMNA IX web site: http://www.cmna.info/CMNA9/

For information on IJCAI-09 see: http://ijcai-09.org/index.html