Ann Copestake's non-automated email response

This page is not intended to deter anyone from emailing me, but just an attempt to save everyone some time. It's primarily intended for people who are trying to contact me for the first time. Unfortunately I don't always have time to answer email: if you've tried emailing me and got no response, please see if your email falls into one of the categories below. You may have come to this page because of my vacation message.

A couple of general points:

Don't send emails with large attachments or indeed any attachment if you can possibly avoid it. If I want to see your cv or whatever, I will request it.
Do not spam! If you are sending email to several people, then make this clear. (If you are sending email to so many people that the CC would take up many lines, then there is a fair chance that you are spamming. There are exceptions, such as party invitations, of course.)
I am finally now having to use spam filtering and am using fairly aggressive settings: see the end of this page.

Here is some information for specific groups:

Prospective PhD students. Please don't email me unless you are interested in computational linguistics - I don't take students who want to do anything else. Have a look at my current research directions page first and also have a look at the various pages for ongoing projects. Also please read the NLIP group page on Postgraduate opportunities and the departmental pages for student admissions before contacting me, taking special note of the comments about funding and application deadlines on the departmental pages. Unless you have some previous experience of computational linguistics, then I would suggest that you take the MPhil course rather than start a PhD straight away. I am willing to consider students who have a background in linguistics or an allied subject rather than computer science, but some CS knowledge is necessary. I regard the research proposal (see the departmental page) as an important part of the application process, so while I am happy to give very general feedback on proposals, I do not give detailed help in constructing them. All questions about PhD admissions not directly related to research should be sent to postgraduate.admissions@cl.cam.ac.uk
Prospective students for the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science. For many years, the Computer Laboratory and Engineering ran a Masters course on Language and Speech Processing. From the 2010-2011 academic year, this course will be replaced by modules in the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science. For admission to the ACS, please read the ACS web pages and contact postgraduate.admissions@cl.cam.ac.uk in the first instance. I am happy to answer questions about the language modules on the course.
Prospective interns. Sorry, but I don't take interns. We have no funding for internships and I don't have the time to supervise interns. I often get several messages a week requesting internships and I have stopped responding to them (especially the ones that start `Dear Sir').
LKB and MRS related. There are wiki pages for the LKB system and MRS and RMRS, though the latter in particular are currently embryonic. The archives for the DELPH-IN mailing lists may be more useful. LKB bugs should be sent to lkb-bugs@csli.stanford.edu (you may get an auto-response directing you to a web-page since we are redoing the bug tracking system). If it's a general question, please use one of the DELPH-IN mailing lists. There is a much better chance you will get a quick response that way, since my co-developers read the lists. If it isn't a general question, and I don't respond, sorry - just try again ...
CSLI book series. See my CSLI book series page for some information. CCing email to pubs@csli.stanford.edu is generally a good idea.
Other research or teaching related - I don't mind being prompted (preferably politely) if I have failed to respond within a reasonable time (which I consider to be 3 working days during term time, 8 days outside of term time). I do generally try and respond faster than that. If I ignore your prompt, then you may be triggering the spam filter. To avoid this, Computer Laboratory/University of Cambridge people should use their Computer Lab/University accounts. There are many innocent triggers of SpamAssassin, and they vary over time, but one frequent problem is the use of base64 encoded text. If you think your message may have been caught by the filter, try again including `Chichester Canal' in the subject line. This also has the advantage that it demonstrates to me that you've taken the trouble to look at this web page!