Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
NL-KR Digest Volume 02 No. 39
NL-KR Digest (5/13/87 09:54:36) Volume 2 Number 39
Today's Topics:
Chart parsers and PROLOG
Grammar Checkers
Re: grammar checkers
Style checkers
Difficult Speech Examples
Re: Difficult Speech Examples
Updated list of speech examples
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Path: rochester!seismo!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!dartvax!uvm-gen!emerson
From: emerson@uvm-gen.UUCP (Tom Emerson)
Subject: Chart parsers and PROLOG
Date: 11 May 87 02:21:58 GMT
Organization: EMBA Computer Facility, Univ. of Vermont, Burlington.
I would like to hear from others who have been working in PROLOG for natural
language processing. I am currently working on implementing an effecient
parser in PROLOG, and have found the active chart formalism to be the most
effective for efficient parsing. Has anyone else done work such as this? I
know that Hideki Hirakawa of ICOT has implemented a chart parser in concurrent
PROLOG (see ICOT TR-008).
For those who would like a description of the chart formalism, I would be glad
to put a short description on the net.
Does any one know of a more effecient formalism than the active chart? All
and any information would be appreciated.
Tom Emerson
University of Vermont
------------------------------
Date: Fri 8 May 87 10:08:45-PDT
From: PAT <HAYES@SPAR-20.ARPA>
Subject: Grammar Checkers
On 'Style checkers'. Of course one shouldnt criticise to extremes, and
no doubt a competent adult would find these things useful sometimes.
That wasnt what I was complaining about: it was using them to
INFLUENCE children. The word was chosen carefully. Marvin isnt going
to think that the thing should be taken as an authority on how to
write, or that in order to write well he should simply arrange that
the style checker doesnt find any problems. But if they are used to
grade or influence the way children write in a school setting, that is
exactly what almost all kids will rapidly decide. ( Unless an
extraordinarily good teacher is in charge, and maybe even then. Just
think of the pressures on a teacher to come to rely on the programs
judgement, and on a pupil to take the machine as authoritative. The
machine finds no fault with Joes essay and complains about Bettys, but
the teacher gives Betty a higher grade..... )
Pat Hayes
------------------------------
Date: 9 May 87 18:17:44 GMT
From: gilbert@aimmi.UUCP.arpa (Gilbert Cockton)
Subject: Grammar Checkers
Organization: Heriot-Watt/Strathclyde Alvey MMI Unit, Scotland
In article <MINSKY.12299573623.BABYL@MIT-OZ> MINSKY@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU writes:
>I agree with Todd, Ogasawara: one should not criticise to extremes.
What does this mean? I thought accuracy was the only goal in
criticism, not avoiding the ends of some quaint invented continuum.
Can we have a style checker which rates our extremity with marks out
of 10 (0 for credulous and 10 for rampant scepticism perhaps :-))
> I also used it to establish a "gradient". The early
>chapters are written at a "grade level" of about 8.6 and the book ends
>up with grade levels more like 13.2 - using RightWriter's quaint
>scale.
How about MIT turning some of its resources towards VALIDATING this
quaint gradient? Do you seriously think there is any real computable ordering,
partial or otherwise, which can be applied to your chapters and
actually square up with any of our everyday evaluations of text
complexity? If so, where's the beef? How would US data square up with
European data. English teachers in the UK, for example, do not apply
unimaginative inflexible rules to students' writing, so it could be
that many educated English students will be turned off by an 8.6
introduction. Luckily we have not yet been carried away with the
belief that all complex ideas can have banal presentations without
bowdlerisation creeping in. Doubtless your style checker would ask me
to drop 'bowdlerise'? What should I have used instead, given that I
want an EXACT synonym with all its connotations? When I taught,
I would have advised my students to find a dictionary (many of them carried
them anyway - and I taught children from a wide range of cultural and
economic backgrounds). God knows what the French would say to a
mechanical style checker (a Franglais remover would go down well
though).
Finally, how on earth do these style checkers know which words will be
commonly understood? Surely they don't use word frequency in newspapers
or something like that? Does the overuse of a word in the media imply
universal understanding of/consensus on its meaning - eg. 'moral',
'freedom', 'extreme', 'quaint', 'seriously', 'inflexible' etc?
Does the limited use of a word in the media imply universal ignorance
- eg. 'ok', 'alright', 'balls', 'claptrap', 'space cadet', 'avid',
'stroppy', 'automaton'?
I would not regard any of the criticisms of style checkers I have read
as 'extreme' at all. The difference seems to be one of gross credulity
versus informed criticism. People who know nothing about good style
will believe all the things which the style checker hackers have MADE
UP - I defy any style checker implementor to point to a sound
experimental/statistical basis for the style rules they have palmed
off onto their gullible customers. Perhaps they did at least read some
books by self-proclaimed authorities, but this would only shift the charge
from invention to uncritical acceptance. I'd still be unimpressed.
This may sound extreme - that however is irrelevant. The point is,
am I accurate?. Note that my substantial assertions are few:
i) Style don't compute. Verify by Chinese characters test
between a style checker and the editors of the New Yorker
(US) or the Listener (UK). Other quality magazine editors
will do. Can you spot the editors' critiques?
ii) The current 'reading age' metrics have no validity.
They are bogus psychometric tools. Operationally I am
saying that their will be no strong correlation (say r >
0.9, p < 0.001) between the reading age of text and a
reader's performance on a comprehension test. Allow the
author to add a glossary and the correlation will weaken.
People can learn new words you know.
iii) Current measures of popular understanding of words are
equally bogus and there is NO decent research to back it
up. There has been some good work on correlating
vocabulary with educational achievement, but this tells
us nothing about the typical adult's vocabulary.
Every assertion above is falsifiable, so let's all forget about emotive
subjective concepts like extremity (= I disagree a lot and wish you hadn't
said that) and get back to an objective, informed debate. The motion
is:
"All computer based style checkers can stunt the literary
growth of their users"
A second order effect is that, although 1,000 chimpanzees could
between them type out the works of Shakespeare given enough time, they
would fail miserably if their output had to be passed by a computer
style checker.
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
>> Sentence starts with infinitive
Sentence has no subject.
Whether it is ....
>> "Whether" may not be understood by people who just read
comics. (? spelling mistake = weather ?).
--
Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
JANET: gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi ARPA: gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
UUCP: ..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert
------------------------------
From: humu!uhccux!todd%nosc.UUCP@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu (The Perplexed Wiz)
Date: 8 May 87 08:32:10 GMT
Subject: Re: grammar checkers
Organization: U. of Hawaii, Manoa (Honolulu)
... While I accept the criticism of my comments in
the spirit of academic give and take in the exchange of ideas, I will
make, I hope, the final comment in this discussion and then consider
it closed for the moment.
I wish the two following commentators
"Linda G. Means" <MEANS%gmr.com@RELAY.CS.NET>
gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton)
had *read* what I said before they reacted. I wrote:
>I think that if these style checking tools are used in conjunction
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>with the efforts of a good teacher of writing, then these style
^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>checkers are of great benefit. It is better that children learn a
>few rules of writing to start with than no rules at all. Of course,
>reading lots of good examples of writing and a good teacher are still
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^
>necessary
^^^^^^^^^
I don't think that anyone would seriously suggest that these borderline
"AI" programs be used *exclusively* to teach children (or people of any
other age group) to write.
Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Computing Center
UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd
ARPA: uhccux!todd@nosc.MIL
INTERNET: todd@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU
------------------------------
Date: 6 May 87 12:46:57 GMT
From: gilbert@hci.hw.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton)
Subject: Style checkers
In article <8704250321.AA15773@uhmanoa.ICS.HAWAII.EDU> todd@humu.UUCP
(The Perplexed Wiz) writes:
>In article <12295086246.19.HAYES@SPAR-20.ARPA> HAYES@SPAR-20.ARPA writes:
>>Let me briefly add a seconding voice to Linda Means comments on the horrible
>>output of the style-criticising programs illustrated a while ago. That
>>people should suggest using such things to influence children almost makes
>>me agree with Weizenbaum.
>I think that we have two extreme views here. I agree that the style
>checkers available for microcomputers are not very sophisticated. I also
>agree that such tools should not be used exclusively to teach children
>(or any other age group for that matter). However, to say that these
>microcomputer based style checkers have no place in teaching children
>to write in not correct.
A few simple grammatical rules (concord, apostrophes, tense structure,
clausal agreement), as these style checkers stand, you are most incorrect -
and I am even more surprised at such comments when they come from a psychology
grad - unless you're doing AI or rat research that is in which case
you're probably a long way from mainstream psychology:-).
The problem with most checkers is that the rules they embody have
often just been made up by technical writing pundits. As long as they
stick to indoctrinating those engineers and other culturally deprived students
WHO NEED HELP WITH THEIR WRITING (not all do), I don't mind - they probably do
improve the writing of some people from dreadful and unintelligible to
ugly and constipated :-).
However, the minute their jibberish is proposed as something for the
whole school population, then the authority of the armchair
philistines has to be scrutinised carefully. There is not an ounce of
decent psychological research on text comprehension behind most of the
pronouncements of technical writing rednecks. As for literary
aesthetics, this doesn't get a look in - anyone care to stick a novel
through one of these joke programs?
So, the first prerequisite for style checkers in schools is proper
experimental validation of the rule base - breaking/obeying rules
must be shown to have a measurable effect on comprehension
performance.
The second prerequisite is the harder one and takes us into the
Weizenbaum camp - the rules checked in the experiments must be
translated faithfully into a program - not easy as we know that
our current formal representations of language and knowledge are
wholly inadequate, and given the nature of computation may never be
adequate. Philosophical objections apart, I will never trust programmers with
no background in what they are programming to get the job right unless
the domain experts have a cast iron way of validating the program (this works
well for many science and engineering problems, as well as for simple
data processing).
So, the current style rules aren't rules, and even if they were their
encapsulation in a computer program cannot be proven.
--
Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN
JANET: gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi ARPA: gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
UUCP: ..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert
------------------------------
Date: 4 May 1987, 16:32:35 EDT
From: Norman Haas <NHAAS@ibm.com>
Subject: Difficult Speech Examples
Two speech recognition trickies from Eng. Lit.:
Our Glass Lake (Hourglass Lake) -- Nabokov
Make-Believe Express (Maple Leaf Express) -- Thurber
------------------------------
Date: 13 May 87 00:02:06 GMT
From: mmt@dciem.UUCP.arpa (Martin Taylor)
Subject: Re: Difficult Speech Examples
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
It is usually claimed that sentential or speech ambiguities can be
resolved by knowing the context. I heard one on TV the other night
that cannot be so resolved. It could be disambiguated only by
asking the talker. Here is the situation:
A nature program was describing the return of salmon from the sea to
their native river. During the salt-to-fresh water transition, they
congregate in the shallow water at the mouth of the river. One after
another, they are picked off by swooping sea-birds. The commentator
said " ... they are picked off by {terns|turns}." Knowing completely
the context, it is impossible to know which he meant, although the two
meanings are very different.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt
mmt@zorac.arpa
Magic is just advanced technology ... so is intelligence. Before computers,
the ability to do arithmetic was proof of intelligence. What proves
intelligence now?
[I would suppose that many puns are constructed (or at least
sharpened) examples of such ambiguities. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: 4 May 1987 2252-PDT (Monday)
From: Eugene Miya N. <eugene@ames-pioneer.arpa>
Subject: Updated list of speech examples
For future purposes, I will be placing a copy of my speech examples
lists on the ames-aurora.arpa host. (Don't check yet.) I've posted
them here and for the comp.ai group on usenet. In the future, I
will separate the ACKs as below for possible liability reasons and to
credit the group as a whole. I will update yearly. The last addition
is particularly interesting. See that type of "writing" has a use after
all.
FYI, aurora is an upgrade of a system which originally did speech synthesis
on an old V*x system, so I only think it appropriate it goes there.
Happy hunting with this little bit of `network memory.'
P.S. I was asked for more Japanese examples, so if anyone in Japan is
working on the subject, I would appreciate examples, I won't be going there
until Fall of 1988 (Cray User Group meeting and more). And this appears
to be a critical area.
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
"You trust the `reply' command with all those different mailers out there?"
"Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."
{hplabs,hao,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene
Acknowledgements:
elman@amos.ling.ucsd.edu (Jeff Elman)
mcguire@aero2.aero.org
minow%thundr.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM Martin Minow (ex-DECtalk developer)
Marc Majka <ames!seismo!ubc-vision!vision.ubc.cdn!majka>
Joseph_D._Becker.osbunorth@Xerox.COM
Stephen Slade@Yale.Arpa
Keith F. Lynch <KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
George Swetnam m06242%mwvm@mitre.ARPA
Erik A. Devereux <GV.DEVEREUX@A20.CC.UTEXAS.EDU>
"In mud eels are, in tar none are".
grey day / grade A
euthanasia / youth in Asia
"Whats that up in the road" ahead / a head?
"Take off your hat and dloves"
and then ask them what you said. 99% of all people will insist that
you said the word "gloves".
I'd be happy if you could do the digits, including "Oh", and Yes/No.
Continuous digits, telephone quality, no training, male and female voice.
The problem is in distinguishing "oh" from "no".
Getting the alphabet (not "alpha", "bravo", but "aye", "bee") would
be nice, too.
I love you
Isle of View
I think you need at least one example in Chinese, and here's my favorite
(because I actually said it by mistake). The numbers after the words
are phonic "tones". What I meant to say was:
Wo(3) hen(3) xiang(3) shui(4)-jiao(4) -- I want to go to sleep
... but what I actually ended up saying was:
Wo(3) hen(3) xiang(4) shui(3)-jiao(3) -- I am like a boiled ravioli
"ice cream"/"I scream"
"beginning"/"big inning"
"soccer"/"sock her"
"its hardware problems are intermittent"/"it's hard where problems ..."
"attacks"/"a tax"
from Mark Twain:
"Good-bye God, I'm going to Missouri."/"Good, by God, I'm going to Missouri."
A notion of water/an ocean of water.
[New York accent only] An arm and a leg/a nominal egg.
Years ago at Bell Labs, I heard the following:
"Joe took mother's shoe bench out; she was waiting at my lawn."
With regard to difficult speech recognition problems, I just saw
variations of the following on the wall of a mens room, so credit goes
to anonymous students at the University of Texas:
``Our understanding of urine formation was clearly wrong.''
``Our understanding of your information was clearly wrong.''
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
*******************
