Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
IRList Digest Volume 2 Number 70
IRList Digest Thursday, 11 December 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 70
Today's Topics:
Query - Back issues on knowledge representation, AI applications
Announcement - New relationship between SIGIR and IP&M
NL-KR - NL dialogue in an integrated computational model
CSLI - Role of lexical semantics in syntax, Resource bounded agent behavior
COGSCI - Massively concurrent systems for KR and reasoning
News addresses are ARPANET: fox%vt@csnet-relay.arpa BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet
CSNET: fox@vt UUCPNET: seismo!vtisr1!irlistrq
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 1 December 1986, 16:22:02 MEZ
From: Wolfgang Zocher (0511) 762-3684 ZZZO at DHVRRZN1.bitnet
RRZN Universitaet Hannover
Schlosswender Str. 5
D3000 Hannover 1
Subject: back issues by topic
Dear Ed,
to get started, I need some back issues of the following topics:
1. Knowledge Representation
2. AI Applications
Thanks,
Wolfgang Zocher
(zzzo@dhvrrzn1)
[Note: I have no topical organization that would allow me to select
issues easily to satisfy your request. I will be happy to supply
desired issues by number; perhaps other readers would send you a list of
numbers they think satisfy your needs and we could work from that. It
might be hard to decide which articles are relevant to YOUR query, though.
Sorry for not being able to help further, Ed.]
------------------------------
Date: Wed Dec 10 17:01 EST 1986
From: fox
Subject: New Arrangement Between ACM SIGIR and IP&M
I. ANNOUNCEMENT
ACM SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) has many
members involved or interested in research activities. Some of those
members receive news through IRList Digest, but only if they have
access to a computer network reachable from BITNET or the DARPA
Internet. All SIGIR members receive the Forum, which is an unrefereed
newsletter. As a additional aid to SIGIR members, and to better serve
the readers of "Information Processing and Management," an international
journal published by Pergamon Press, a new arrangement has been
established between ACM SIGIR and IP&M.
1) Pages Set Aside
Since SIGIR members are actively involved in research that is of
interest to IP&M readers, there will be a number of pages set aside
each year for SIGIR use. Some of the possibilities are listed below;
other suggestions are welcome.
2) SIGIR Meetings
IP&M will publish selected papers from SIGIR meetings, and will if
agreeable to all, publish a special issue where such papers are
assembled.
3) Special Issues
IP&M is interested in special issues on topics related to SIGIR
members' work and/or braoder interests. An example of this is the
special issue on "Artificial Intelligence and Information Retrieval"
now being assembled by W. Bruce Croft. An editor can be appointed for
other such issues when a suitable topic is identified.
4) Articles
IP&M is interested in receiving other articles from SIGIR members.
They should be sent to the Liason (see 7 below) and will be reviewed
by at least 2 referees in standard fashion. Submissions to SIGIR
Forum that have such potential will be screened with this in mind.
5) Camera Ready Publications
Brief communications can appear quickly in IP&M if sent in camera
ready form -- providing a fast publication outlet.
6) Announcments
IP&M is willing to publish SIGIR announcements such as calls for
papers, free of charge.
7) Liason
Dr. Edward A. Fox has been appointed to serve on the editorial board
of IP&M. He will serve as a liason between SIGIR and IP&M. He can be
contacted to receive submissions of any of the types mentioned above,
or for other related matters. Correspondence should be sent to
Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA 24061
II. CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
In light of the above arrangements, a call is hereby made to all
SIGIR members to send in articles, announcements, suggestions for
special issues, or other comments relating to this new arrangement.
Please communicate directly with the Liason and be sure to indicate
that you wish your submission to be considered for IP&M.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 86 01:09:47 est
From: nl-kr-request@cs.rochester.edu
Subject: NL-KR Digest Volume 1 No. 26 [Extract - Ed]
Date: 1 Dec 86 14:42:53 EST
From: Robert.Frederking@cad.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Thesis Defense: Frederking on Dialogue in a Computational Model
NATURAL LANGUAGE DIALOGUE IN
AN INTEGRATED COMPUTATIONAL MODEL
Robert Eric Frederking
ABSTRACT
Natural language dialogue is a continuous, unified phenomenon. Speakers use
their conversational context to simplify individual utterances through a number
of linguistic devices, including ellipsis and definite references. Yet most
computational systems for using natural language treat individual utterances as
separate entities, and have distinctly separate processes for handling
intersentential phenomena.
The computational system presented here, Psli3, uses the uniform framework of a
production system architecture to carry out the different processes involved in
natural language understanding and generation in a well-integrated way. Its
conversational context arises naturally as the result of the persistence of the
internal representations of previous sentences in working memory. Natural
language input is interpreted within this framework using a a modification of
the syntactic technique of chart parsing, extended to include semantics, and
adapted to the production system architecture. It provides a graceful way of
handling ambiguity within this architecture, and allows various knowledge
sources to act in a highly integrated fashion. The smooth integration of
different types of processing across different utterances is demonstrated using
the phenomena of intersentential ellipsis and definite reference.
The design of this system demonstrates how flexible and natural user
interactions can be carried out using a system with a naturally flexible
control structure. It also demonstrates how one could implement a real natural
language interface in a sufficiently fast production system. The semantic
chart parser is further extended to allow several closely related sentences to
be treated in a single chart. This allows the relationship between the
sentences to be used in a simple way to select between competing alternative
intrepretations.
We describe this system in detail, and include a number of extensive examples
of the system's processing during a user interaction. A processing-based
taxonomy for ellipsis resolution that we developed is also presented.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 86 01:09:09 est
From: vtcs1::in% <EMMA@CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: CSLI Calendar, December 4, No. 9 [Extract - Ed]
Reading: What to do with theta-Roles?
Discussion led by Annie Zaenen
December 4
When Extended Standard Theory won the linguistic wars (Newmeyer's
version of linguistic history), lexical semantics went out of fashion
in mainstream generative grammar but, as is often the case with
victories that are the results of power politics rather than reason,
the problems that were raised in the generative semantics research
remained unsolved and recent years have seen them resurface. At this
point several attempts to specify the role of lexical semantics in
syntax are under elaboration. Among the debated issues are (1) the way
semantic information has to be represented in the lexicon; (2) the
number and the properties of the levels of representation needed to
link semantics and syntax.
The paper tries to give a partial answer to these questions from a
Government Binding related view. I choose it because that point of
view will most likely not be widely represented among the live
participants at the TINLunch. The main purpose of the lunch should be
a discussion of the general issues raised in the paper rather than a
critique of the paper itself.
Other relevant recent writings on the topic include: Dowty (1986):
On the semantic content of thematic roles; Jackendoff (1986): The
status of Thematic Relations in Linguistic Theory; Foley and Van Valin
(1984): Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar; and Kiparsky's
manuscript on Morphosyntax.
--------------
THIS WEEK'S SEMINAR
Rational Behavior in Resource-bounded Agents
David Israel
December 4
Members of the Rational Agency Project at CSLI (RatAg) have been
involved in research to develop an architecture for the production of
rational behavior in resource-bounded agents. The overall aim of this
work is to combine techniques that have been constructed in artificial
intelligence for automating means-end reasoning with a computational
instantiation of techniques that have been developed in decision
theory for weighing alternative courses of action. The focus is on
ensuring that the resulting synthesis is a viable architecture for
agents who, like humans and robots, are resource-bounded, i.e., unable
to perform arbitrarily large computations in constant time.
Predicating the architecture on the fact that agents have resource
bounds will enable its use both as a device for producing rational
behavior in robots that are situated in dynamic, real-world
environments, and as a model of human rational behavior. In taking
seriously the problem of resource boundedness, we draw heavily on the
view of plans as ``filters'' on practical reasoning. We are concerned
with determining what regularities there are in the relationship
between an agent and her environment that can be exploited in the
design of the filtering process.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 7 Dec 86 01:09:51 est
From: DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar [Extract - Ed]
Date: Friday, 5 December 1986 11:09-EST
From: JHC at OZ.AI.MIT.EDU
Subject: Revolving Seminar December 11
Thursday, 11 December 4:00pm Room: NE43-8th floor playroom
AI REVOLVING SEMINAR
Massively Concurrent Systems
For Knowledge Representation And Reasoning
Gul A. Agha, MIT AI Lab
The problem of reasoning is central to Artificial Intelligence
systems. The effectiveness of a "reasoning method" is intimately tied
to the "knowledge representation" scheme on which it operates. The
seminar will discuss some recent theoretical work in inheritance-based
models for knowledge representation. Problems germane to
inheritance-based models include exception handling, multiple
inheritance, and viewpoints. The talk will outline some mechanisms
that have been proposed to address these issues. Methods of reasoning
such as first-order logic, nonmonotonic logic and due process
reasoning will be related to the knowledge representation schemes.
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
********************
