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NL-KR Digest Volume 01 No. 15
NL-KR Digest (10/14/86 11:10:32) Volume 1 Number 15
Today's Topics:
Re: Tiny ATN
Seminars:
Inferring domain plans in question answering
Prospects for connectionist speech recognition
Conferences:
Interaction of Form and Function in Language: CALL FOR PAPERS
Society for Philosophy & Psychology: CALL FOR PAPERS
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Date: Mon 13 Oct 86 09:26:49-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS@SRI-IU.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Tiny ATN
Lisp code for a small ATN parser was given in the premier issue
of AI Expert, p. 15.
-- Ken Laws
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 86 13:51:58 EDT
From: "Steven A. Swernofsky" <SASW%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Inferring domain plans in question answering
BBN Laboratories
Science Development Program
AI/Education Seminar
Speaker: Martha E. Pollack
Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International
(Pollack@Sri-Warbucks.Arpa)
Title: INFERRING DOMAIN PLANS IN QUESTION-ANSWERING
Date: 10:30a.m., Thursday, October 16th
Location: 3rd floor large conference room,
BBN Labs, 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge
Abstract
The importance of plan inference in models of conversation has been
widely noted in the computational-linguistics literature, and its
incorporation in question-answering systems has enabled a range of
cooperative behaviors. The plan inference process in each of these
systems, however, has assumed that the questioner (Q) whose plan is being
inferred and the respondent (R) who is drawing the inference have
identical beliefs about the actions in the domain. I demonstrate that this
assumption is too strong, and often results in failure not only of the plan
inference process, but also of the communicative process that plan
inference is meant to support. In particular, it precludes the principled
generation of appropriate responses to queries that arise from invalid
plans. I present a model of plan inference in conversation that
distinguishes between the beliefs of the questioner and the beliefs of the
respondent. This model rests on an account of plans as mental phenomena:
"having a plan" is analyzed as having a particular configuration of beliefs
and intentions. Judgements that a plan is invalid are associated with
particular discrepancies between the beliefs that R ascribes to Q, when R
believes Q has some particular plan, and the beliefs R herself holds. I
define several types of invalidities from which a plan may suffer, relating
each to a particular type of belief discrepancy, and show that the types of
any invalidities judged to be present in the plan underlying a query can
affect the content of a cooperative response. The plan inference model has
been implemented in SPIRIT -- a System for Plan Inference that Reasons
about Invalidities Too -- which reasons about plans underlying queries in
the domain of computer mail.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 86 13:46:43 EDT
From: "Steven A. Swernofsky" <SASW%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Prospects for connectionist speech recognition
BBN Laboratories
Science Development Program
AI/Education Seminar
Speaker: Professor Geoffry Hinton
Carnegie-Mellon University
(Geoff.Hinton@C.CS.CMU.EDU)
Title: "Prospects for connectionist speech recognition"
Date: 2:00p.m., Wednesday, October 22nd
Location: 3rd floor large conference room,
BBN Labs, 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge
Abstract
Recent developments in connectionist learning procedures suggest that it
may be possible to improve on the best existing methods for bottom-up
recognition of phonemes. I shall describe one preliminary experiment that
demonstrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of the
"back-propagation" learning procedure. I shall also describe a class of
unsupervised learning procedures that scale better with the size of the input.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 86 19:24:10 pdt
From: ucdavis!harpo!lakhota@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
From: Robert Van Valin, UC Davis
Subject: Interaction of Form and Function in Language: CALL FOR PAPERS
CALL FOR PAPERS
The UC Davis Conference on the Interaction of Form and Function in Language
University of California, Davis January 17-18, 1987
Symposium on Functionalist Approaches to Language Acquisition
Invited Speakers: Elizabeth Bates, University of California, San Diego
Brian MacWhinney, Carnegie-Mellon University
Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago
Dan Slobin, University of California, Berkeley
Most of the grammatical research over the past few years has been devoted
either to the study of the formal properties of language without reference to
the communicative functions of language structures or to the analysis of these
functions without much concern for the formal structures which realize them.
While a great deal has been learned in these investigations, important light
can be shed on the nature of human language through the analysis of how form
and function are integrated in linguistic systems.
Abstracts are solicited for 20-minute presentations focussing on topics
concerning the interplay of form and function in linguistic systems. They may
be submitted for the general sessions or for the symposium on language acquisi-
tion. In addition to the paper sessions, there will be workshops organized
around particular topics, e.g. case marking, clause linkage, the formal proper-
ties of functionalist theories of grammar.
Send six copies of a one-page abstract together with a 3x5 card with your
name, affiliation and address to:
Conference Organizing Committee
Linguistics Program
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
(916) 752-1219
Bitnet: RDVANVALIN@UCDAVIS
Arpanet: UCDAVIS!HARPO!LAKHOTA@UCBVAX.EDU
DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: NOVEMBER 21, 1986
------------------------------
Date: 11 Oct 86 04:55:29 GMT
From: harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad)
Subject: Society for Philosophy & Psychology: CALL FOR PAPERS
[Please post hard copy locally]
SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY
Call for Papers for 1987 Annual Meeting
University of California at SAN Diego, June 21 - 23 1987
The Society for Philosophy and Psychology is calling for contributed
papers and symposium proposals for its 13th annual meeting in San Diego.
The Society consists of psychologists, philosophers, and other
cognitive scientists with common interests in the study of behavior,
cognition, language, the nervous system, artificial intelligence,
consciousness, and the foundations of psychology.
Past participants in annual meetings have included: N. Chomsky,
D. Dennett, J. Fodor, C. R. Gallistel, J. J. Gibson, S. J. Gould,
R. L. Gregory, R. J. Herrnstein, D. Hofstadter, J. jaynes, G. A. Miller,
H. Putnam, Z. Pylyshyn, W. V. Quine, R. Schank, W. Sellars and
P. Teitelbaum.
Contributed Papers are refereed and selected on the basis of quality
and relevance to both psychologists and philosophers. Psychologists,
neuroscientists, linguists, computer scientists and biologists are
encouraged to report experimental, theoretical and clinical work that
they judge to have philosophical significance.
Contributed papers are for oral presentation and should not exceed a
length of 30 minutes (about 12 double-spaced pages). The deadline for
submision is 12 January, 1987. Please send three copies to the
Program Chairman:
Professor William Bechtel
Society for Philosophy and Psychology
Department of Philosophy
Georgia State University
Atlanta GA 30303-3083
Phone: (404) 658-2277
Symposium proposals should also be sent to the above address as soon
as possible.
Local Arrangements: Professor Patricia Kitcher, B-002, Department of
Philosophy, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla CA 92093.
Individuals interested in becoming members of the Society should send
$15 membership dues ($5 for students) to Professor Kitcher at the
above address.
SPP Officers: President: Stevan Harnad (Behavioral & Brain Sciences)
President-Elect: Alvin I. Goldman (U. Arizona)
Secretary Treasurer: Patricia Kitcher (UCSD)
Program Chairman: William Bechtel (U. Georgia)
Executive Committee:
Myles Brand (U. Arizona) R. S. Jackendoff (Brandeis)
Daniel Dennett (Tufts) William Lycan (U. N. Carolina)
Fred Dretske (U. Wisconsin) John Macnamara (McGill)
Jerome A. Feldman (U. Rochester) Carolyn Ristau (Rockefeller)
Janet Fodor (CUNY) Anne Treisman (UC, Berkeley)
Alison Gopnik (U. Toronto) Robert Van Gulick (Syracuse U.)
Charles C. Wood (Yale)
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End of NL-KR Digest
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