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IRList Digest Volume 4 Number 03
IRList Digest Tuesday, 26 January 1988 Volume 4 : Issue 3
Today's Topics:
COGSCI - Emergence of utterance meaning through social interaction
- Cooperative plans and discourse
CSLI - 4th yr. report, 1987 Linguistics Institute, Postdoc. fellowships
News addresses are
Internet or CSNET: fox@vtopus.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: foxea@vtvax3.bitnet
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Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1988 15:55 EST
From: Peter de Jong <DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar [Extract - Ed]
Date: Monday, 4 January 1988 10:02-EST
From: Dori Wells <DWELLS at G.BBN.COM>
Re: Reminder Lang. & Cognition Seminar
BBN Science Development Program
Language and Cognition Seminar
THE EMERGENCE OF UTTERANCE MEANING THROUGH SOCIAL INTERACTION
Charles and Marjorie Goodwin
Department of Anthropology
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
BBN Laboraatories
10 Moulton Street
Large Conference Room, 2nd Floor
10:30 a.m., Thursday, January 7, 1988
Abstract: Using micro-analysis of video-taped materials, we will
show how utterances (and the sentences being made visible through
them) are shaped by ongoing processes of interaction between speaker and
recipient(s) that is occurring while the utterance is being spoken.
The emerging utterance is modified as various contingencies emerge within the
interaction. For example as speaker moves his or her gaze from one
possible recipient to another, the emerging sentence is changed so that it
remains appropriate to its recipient of the moment. As the
interaction unfolds new segments are added to the emerging utterance,
other projected segments are deleted and the emerging meaning of the
utterance is reconstructed. The utterance thus emerges not from the
actions of speaker alone, but rather as the result of an
collaborative process of interaction that includes the active participation of
recipient(s) as well.
For information about this Seminar Series contact Livia Polanyi
at 873-3455 [lpolanyi@g.bbn.com]
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Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1988 17:46 EST
From: Peter de Jong <DEJONG%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Cognitive Science Calendar [Extract - Ed]
Date: Friday, 15 January 1988 11:39-EST
From: Marc Vilain <MVILAIN at G.BBN.COM>
Re: BBN AI Seminar -- Grosz & Sidner
BBN Science Development Program
AI Seminar Series Lecture
COLLABORATIVE PLANS AND DISCOURSE
Barbara Grosz, Harvard University
Candy Sidner, BBN Laboratories, Inc.
(grosz@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU, sidner@G.BBN.COM)
BBN Labs
10 Moulton Street
2nd floor large conference room
10:30 am, Tuesday January 19th
Discourses are fundamentally instances of collaborative behavior among
multiple agents. The collaborative nature of discourse is most
apparent in dialogues. The participants in a dialogue work together
to satisfy various of their individual and joint needs. Their
utterances are actions that contribute to the satisfaction of these
needs. From this perspective communication is a means for working
collaboratively to achieve shared objectives.
Because collaborative action comprises actions by different agents,
collaborative plans involve the intentions of multiple agents.
Furthermore, the collaborative planning process is a refinement
process; a partial plan description is modified over the course of
planning by the [multiple] agents involved in the collaboration. Most
existing theories of actions, plans, and the plan recognition process
do not deal adequately with collaboration.
In this seminar we will discuss recent joint work on defining a
model for plans that involve actions by two agents, and on
specifying the process of developing a collaborative plan for
satisfying a jointly agreed upon objective. Collaborative plans
will be defined in terms of intentions of the agents and beliefs
they share about actions and intentions. We will show how
utterances are used to establish shared beliefs, to establish the
holding of intentions, and to refine a partial plan. Examples
will be presented involving several different types of actions
performed by multiple agents, including simultaneous actions.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 88 17:10:22 PST
From: Emma Pease <emma@RUSSELL.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: CSLI Monthly [Extract - Ed]
January 1988
Dear Monthly Subscriber:
CSLI has decided to suspend publication of the Monthly, at least
temporarily. On request, I will send you a copy of our Fourth Year
Report, which contains the project reports that were promised for the
next few issues of the Monthly. Please send e-mail with your postal
address to hyde@russell.stanford.edu if you would like to receive a
copy of the report.
Attached is a report from Ivan Sag about the 1987 Linguistic
Institute, an announcement about CSLI's postdoctoral fellow program
for 1988-89, ...
Thank you for your interest in CSLI. I hope you will continue to keep
in contact with us via our CSLI reports and CSLI lecture notes. For
further information about these series, please write to:
Dikran Karagueuzian
Editor
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Ventura Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Macken
Associate Director
CSLI
--------------------
THE 1987 LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE
>From 29 June to 7 August 1987, the Stanford Linguistics Department was
host to the 54th Linguistic Institute, whose theme was "Computational
and Contextual Dimensions of Language." The program we mounted
offered more than sixty courses in a number of different research
areas, including linguistic theory, computational linguistics,
discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, artificial
intelligence, historical linguistics, the philosophy of language,
educational linguistics, theories of information, and African
linguistics. These courses were taught by more than eighty faculty,
including many CSLI researchers, and attracted more than a thousand
participants. In addition, there were eight conferences, five ongoing
workshops, and three lecture series. It was exhausting, but it was
exhilarating.
Since the 1920s, the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) has sponsored
Linguistic Institutes on any number of university campuses. They have
always been the locus of intellectual excitement, featuring courses by
distinguished scholars from all over the world. And our Institute was
no exception. But ours was unique in a number of ways: it was
probably the biggest (counting all the diverse sorts of participants);
it was the most interdisciplinary (the faculty included a bevy of
computer scientists, psychologists, and philosophers); it was the most
"hi-tech" (hundreds of linguists took their first crack at
sophisticated computing facilities) and it was the most intense. I've
participated in nine previous Institutes, and never have I seen people
attend lectures virtually nonstop from early in the morning to late at
night and still have the energy to boogie 'til they dropped on
weekends.
What got these hundreds of people so excited? It wasn't just the
well-catered parties and the rock 'n' roll (was it?). It was the
enthusiasm of the individual instructors, the quality of the courses,
the richness of the special events, and -- in hundreds of cases -- the
opportunity to get a first-hand acquaintance with the work being done
around CSLI. Computational linguistics in particular seemed to be the
most popular area of study, but situation semantics, information-based
grammatical theories, and discourse/pragmatics also generated
enthusiastic responses from the large number of students, visiting
scholars, and other auditors who attended courses in these areas.
At the 1974 Institute at UMass (Amherst), there were two courses in
particular that generated this same sort of excitement: Barbara
Partee's Montague Grammar course, and David Perlmutter and Paul
Postal's course in relational grammar. In both cases, Institute
participants from all over the world took away new ideas,
perspectives, and analytic techniques, which gave rise to new research
communities in many distant lands. Both research traditions have had
a major impact on the field of linguistics, due in no small part to
the Amherst Institute. It will be interesting to watch the effects of
our Institute in the years to come.
But even if you missed it (while you were on vacation in the south of
France), all is not lost. Thanks to the efforts of Fernando Pereira,
Ray Perrault, and Bob Moore, SRI International agreed to finance the
videotaping of eleven Institute courses (those taught by Kay, Pereira,
Shieber, Pollard and Sag, Bresnan, Hayes and Nilsson, Gazdar and
Mellish, Chierchia, and Gazdar and Pullum). These will be available
for sale in the near future, with part of the royalties going to a
fund to support fellowships for future Linguistic Institutes.
There are many debts to acknowledge. The Institute received generous
support from its cosponsoring organizations, the Linguistic Society of
America, the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the
American Association for Artificial Intelligence, as well as from the
Sloan Foundation and the Soros Foundation. In addition, the System
Development Foundation made a generous gift to the LSA to support
student fellowships. Thanks are also due to the Xerox Corporation,
which contributed the services of several Institute faculty and
support for the Logic and Linguistics Conference; to the
Hewlett-Packard Company, which sponsored the symposium on Evaluating
Natural Language Systems and an elegant post-symposium reception; to
AT&T Bell Laboratories and Schlumberger Laboratories, each of which
contributed the services of a faculty member; and to the IREX Board of
ACLS, which supported the symposium on Lexical Semantics.
But in particular, I would like to take this opportunity to thank
CSLI, which (under the inspired leadership of Tom Wasow) provided
constant support for every aspect of the 1987 Linguistic Institute,
including our computer needs, our brochures, our posters, virtually
every conference and workshop, and most importantly, our students. It
would have been a very different Institute without the help of the
CSLI staff (thanks to Emma, Rich, Brad, Doug, and Joyce in
particular), and the various individuals supported by CSLI research
funds who graciously contributed their lecturing services.
It was an honor and a privilege to serve as director of the Institute,
an honor and a privilege I will gladly pass on to one of you, should
we ever decide (God help us!) to do it again.
Ivan A. Sag
Director: 1987 Linguistic Institute
(on sabbatical: 1987--1988)
--------------------
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS
The Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at
Stanford University is currently accepting applications for a small
number of one-year postdoctoral fellowships commencing 1 September
1988. The awards are intended for people who have received their
Ph.D. degrees since June 1985.
Postdoctoral fellows will participate in an integrated program of
basic research on situated language -- language as used by agents
situated in the world to exchange, store, and process information,
including both natural and computer languages.
Awards are intended for scholars interested in at least one of the
following areas of research: situation theory and situation semantics,
discourse as rational activity, and embedded computation.
For more information about CSLI's research programs and details of
postdoctoral fellowship appointments, write to:
Dr. Elizabeth Macken
Associate Director
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Ventura Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
APPLICATION DEADLINE: 7 MARCH 1988
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END OF IRList Digest
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