"Is Speech Language?". 
Organisers: Joseph Mariani (LIMSI, Paris), Steven Krauwer (OTS, Utrecht) 
Most people would not hesitate to give an affir- 
mative answer to the question whether speech is 
language. It seems so obviously true. Yet, when 
looking at what is happening in the language and 
speech research community one may feel tempted 
to believe that the two topics are totally unre- 
lated: language and speech researchers have their 
own conferences, their own journals, and their own 
professional associations. They have their own re- 
search projects, their own technological goals, and 
attending their conferences and reading their jour- 
nals reveals a large number of differences in cul- 
ture, style and approach. 
These observations give raise to a number of 
questions, such as: - Are the observations correct, 
or is it just a matter of misperception, caused by 
focussing on the differences rather than the sim- 
ilarities. - What causes the differences: is it the 
fact that language and speech problems ARE dif- 
ferent, is it a matter of background and education, 
or is it a combination of both. - Is the separa- 
tion of the two communities as justified as e.g. 
the separation between astrology and astronomy, 
or should it be seen as a problem we should try 
to solve. - Would NLP and Speech benefit from 
collaboration (new and better insights, theories, 
products), or would they just be in each other's 
way? 
This panel, organised by ELSNET (The Euro- 
pean Network in Language and Speech) will ad- 
dress (amongst others) the questions formulated 
above. A number of prominent workers in the 
fields of NLP and Speech have been invited to 
present and confront their views, and it is hoped 
that the audience will actively participate in the 
discussion. 
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