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NL-KR Digest Volume 02 No. 17
NL-KR Digest (3/18/87 22:13:11) Volume 2 Number 17
Today's Topics:
Linguistics talks by Jane Simpson
Colloquim: Applying Precedents in a Case-Based Reasoner
From CSLI Calendar, Mar. 19, No.20
Announcement and Call for Papers for COLING-88
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 17 Mar 1987 2203-EST
From: Lori Levin <LEVIN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Subject: Linguistics talks by Jane Simpson
TWO LINGUISTICS/COMP-LING TALKS BY JANE SIMPSON
Monday, March 23
4:15 pm
237B Baker Hall
Reception Following in 135 Baker Hall
If you would like to meet with Jane on Tuesday, March 24, or
Wednesday, March 25, contact Lori Levin (Levin@c).
THE WARLPIRI DICTIONARY PROJECT: ENTRIES FOR AFFIXES
Jane Simpson
Lexicon Project, MIT Center for Cognitive Science
ABSTRACT
The Warlpiri (Walbiri) language of central Australia has been
studied by a number of linguists over the last few decades, most
notably by Kenneth Hale. The wealth of Warlpiri text that has been
transcribed or, more recently, written by Warlpiris, is not really
matched by the published analytical materials. The preparation of a
dictionary of Warlpiri is simultaneously an excellent focus for
continuing investigation of the language, and also the most useful
single product that linguists can provide the community (whether the
Warlpiri community, linguists, or a wider audience).
Warlpiri is a language with a rich morphology - not only are tense and
aspect, grammatical case and spatial/temporal case relations, and
subordination expressed by suffixes, but propositional attitudes and
certain quantifiers are often expressed by enclitics. I will discuss
our current work on providing lexical entries for affixes, including
on the expression of the meaning of suffixes which enter into paradigms.
***
Linguistics Department Seminar, University of Pittsburgh
Wednesday, March 25
4:00 pm
2818 Cathedral of Learning
Language Maintenance in Australia:
THE LANGUAGE SITUATION IN TENNANT CREEK
Jane Simpson
Lexicon Project, MIT Center for Cognitive Science
ABSTRACT
Tennant Creek is a small town in the Northern Territory of Australia,
where about 800 Aborigines live, speaking at least 7 different
languages. Last year, a language centre was set up to assist in the
maintenance of languages. I briefly outline the recent history of the
Tennant Creek community that has led to this multilingual situation. I
discuss the present state of the languages, and the efforts made
to maintain them. I focus on the borrowing of terms from a creole
(Aboriginal English) to express new concepts in Warumungu, (the major
language of the area). I contrast this with the strategies recorded
by Geoffrey O'Grady for Nyangumarda (a Western Australian language) in
1960. I argue that the widespread use of Aboriginal English to express
new concepts reflects not only the emergence of a creole (Aboriginal
English) as the common language of Tennant Creek Aborigines, but also
the wide-spread attitude among Australian Aborigines that language is
intellectual property held in common. This has implications for
language planning, in that individuals are not willing to make
decisions about expressing new concepts in Warumungu without group
sanction.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 87 16:46:45 EST
From: tim@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Tim Finin)
Subject: Colloquim: Applying Precedents in a Case-Based Reasoner
Colloquium
Computer and Information Science
University of Pennsylvania
"Applying Relevant Precedents in a Case-Based Reasoning System"
Kevin D. Ashley
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
The law is an excellent domain to study Case-Based Reasoning (``CBR")
problems since it espouses a doctrine of precedent in which prior
cases are the primary tools for justifying legal conclusions. The law
is also a paradigm for adversarial CBR; there are ``no right answers",
only arguments pitting interpretations of cases and facts against each
other.
This talk will demonstrate techniques employed in the HYPO program for
representing and applying case precedents and hypothetical cases to
assist an attorney in evaluating and making arguments about a new fact
situation. HYPO performs case-based reasoning and, in particular,
models legal reasoning in the domain of trade secrets law. HYPO's key
elements include: (1) a structured case knowledge base (``CKB") of
actual legal cases; (2) an indexing scheme (``dimensions") for
retrieval of relevant precedents from the CKB; (3) techniques for
analyzing a current fact situation (``cfs"); (4) techniques for
``positioning" the cfs with respect to relevant precedent cases in the
CKB and finding the most on point cases (``mopc"); (5) techniques for
manipulating cases (e.g., citing, distinguishing, hybridizing); (6)
techniques for perturbing the cfs to generate hypotheticals that test
the sensitivity of the cfs to changes, particularly with regard to
potentially adverse effects of new damaging facts coming to light and
existing favorable ones being discredited; and (7) the use of ``3-ply"
argument snippets to dry run and debug an argument.
An extended example of HYPO in action on a sample trade secrets case
will be presented. The example will demonstrate how HYPO uses
``dimensions", ``case-analysis-record" and ``claim lattice" mechanisms
to perform indexing and relevancy assessment of precedent cases
dynamically and how it compares and contrasts cases to come up with
the best precedents pro and con a decision.
March 20, 1987
3:00 to 4:30
Room 216
Refreshments Available
2:30-3:00
Faculty Lounge
------------------------------
Date: Wed 18 Mar 87 16:45:14-PST
From: Emma Pease <Emma@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: From CSLI Calendar, Mar. 19, No.20
Tel: (415) 723-3561
[Excerpted from CSLI Calendar]
NEXT WEEK'S TINLUNCH
Anaphora and Distributivity
Reading: "Modal Subordination, Anaphora and Distributivity"
by Craige Roberts, pages 100-104 and 190-255
John Nerbonne, HP Labs & CSLI
March 26
Craige Roberts's dissertation, "Modal Subordination, Anaphora and
Distributivity," was the subject of a CSLI seminar earlier this year.
In that seminar she focused on her novel analysis of the distributive
reading of plurals and collectives, and that analysis will again be
the focus of this TINLunch.
The central claim to be examined is that the two readings of (1)
arise from the presence or absence of a distributive operator `D' at
the level of discourse representation:
(1) Tom and Dan built a cabin
(1a) (T&D) ((lambda x)(build x,c))
(1b) (T&D) D((lambda x)(build x,c)) ==> (T&D) ((lambda y)(forall i
(i i-part y) --> (build i,c)))
The semantics of the distributive operator is essentially that of the
"floated" adverbial quantifier `each', as this was analyzed by Dowty
and Brodie (1984), so that we can paraphrase the two readings:
(1a') Tom and Dan built a cabin TOGETHER.
(1b') Tom and Dan EACH built a cabin.
Roberts shows that there's a difference in anaphoric potential for
`a cabin' in the two readings. (2) can follow (1), but only on the
collective (nondistributive) reading ((1a)).
(2) It's got two rooms.
This is significant by itself, since it's the first linguistic
evidence (ever) that the difference in meaning is an ambiguity, rather
than a vagueness or generality. But Roberts also goes on to explain
the difference, showing that the difference in anaphoric potential
follows from the discourse representation stuctures she proposes
(parallel to (1a) and (1b)) together with just the usual DRT
strictures on anaphoric relations. (To see this, note that the DRT
box-inducer `forall' scopes over c only in (1b), anaphorically masking
it.)
NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
Subject Control Properties with Predicates
that take Noninfinitival Complements
Charles Fillmore, University of California, Berkeley
March 26
While infinitival complements and their control properties have been
extensively studied, much less is known about the control properties
of noninfinitival complements. In this talk we will survey a number
of these noninfinitival control phenomena:
Nonsubject control in gerunds:
(1) This problem merits looking into.
(2) This passage deserves careful reading.
Relations between subjects of verbs and `subjects' of nouns:
(3) She observed the operation.
(4) She performed the operation.
(5) She underwent the operation.
The control properties of `worth':
(6a) *Doing this is worth.
(6b) *It is worth doing this.
(6c) This is worth doing.
(7a) Doing this is worth while.
(7b) It is worth while doing this.
(7c) ?This is worth while doing.
[deplored by Fowler, accepted by the young people around
me.]
(8a) Doing this is worth it.
(8b) It is worth it doing this.
[right dislocation, not extraposition.]
(8c) *This is worth it doing.
We will also look for semantic correlates for the syntactic behavior
exhibited in these constructions.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 87 22:12:30 est
From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker)
Subject: Announcement and Call for Papers for COLING-88
COLING-88
12th International Conference on Computational Linguistics
22-27 August 1988, Budapest, Hungary
ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
Papers are invited on all aspects of computational linguistics in a broad
sense, including but not limited to:
> theoretical issues of CL in its relations to linguistics, mathematics,
computer science and cognitive science
> computational models of (sub)systems of natural language and of human
communication (phonemics, morphemic, syntax, semantics, pragmatics,
parsing and generation, discourse, speech acts and planning)
> linguistic contributions to
- natural language dialog systems, intelligent and cooperative question
answering
- machine (aided) translation
- speech understanding and voice output procedures
- systems for text generation
- systems for use and preparation of dictionaries for humans and machines
- intelligent text editors
> knowledge representation and inferencing
- language comprehension
- automatic creation of knowledge bases from texts
> hardware and software support for language data processing
> computational tools for language learning and teaching
Papers should report on substantial, original and unpublished research and
should indicate clearly the position of the work described within the
context of the research in the given domain and emphasize what new results
have been achieved.
Authors should submit four (4) copies of an extended abstract not
exceeding seven (7) double-spaced pages plus a title page including the
name(s) of the author(s), complete address, a short (five-line)
summary, and a specification of the topic area.
Abstracts must be received not later than 10 December 1987 by the
Chairperson of the Program Committee:
Dr. Eva Hajicova (COLING-88)
Charles University
Faculty of Mathematics, Linguistics
Malostranske n. 25
CS-118 00 Praha 1, Czechoslovakia
Authors will be notified of acceptance by 28 February 1988. Camera-ready
copies of final papers must be received by 30 April 1988.
Inquiries about the conference, exhibitions, and demonstrations (live and
video) should be directed to:
COLING-88 Secretariat
c/o MTESZ Congress Bureau
Kossuth ter 6-8
H-1055 Budapest, Hungary
telex 225792 MTESZ H
COLING-88 is sponsored by the International Committee on Computational
Linguistics. It is organized by the John von Neumann Society for
Computing Sciences in cooperation with the Computer and Automation
Institute and the Institute for Linguistics, both of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences.
COLING-88 will be preceded by tutorials and workshops, and immediately
followed by the 3rd EURALEX Congress on all aspects of lexicography,
also to be held in Budapest.
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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