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NL-KR Digest Volume 03 No. 32
NL-KR Digest (10/15/87 19:37:31) Volume 3 Number 32
Today's Topics:
Book announcement
UCSD Dept.of Cognitive Science jobs openings
Seminars:
Multilingual Semantic Structures (BBN)
Lexicons, by D. Walker (Buffalo)
The Matrix of Biological Knowledge by Kimberle Koile (BBN)
Computerized Lexicography
PROLOG AND AI APPLICATIONS - A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE
OB1: A Prolog-Based Object-Oriented Database
CSLI Calendar
Conference - Uses of Large Text Databases
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Date: Sat, 3 Oct 87 12:13 EDT
From: DESMEDT%HNYKUN53.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Subject: Book announcement
The proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Natural Language
Generation have now appeared as a book:
Kempen, G. (ed.), Natural Language Generation: New results in Artificial
Intelligence, Psychology and Linguistics. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
Dordrecht/Boston, 1987.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 87 00:48 EDT
From: Jeff Elman <elman@amos.ling.ucsd.edu>
Subject: UCSD Dept.of Cognitive Science jobs openings
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego is considering
the establishment of a Department of Cognitive Science
and is seeking candidates for tenured or tenure-track
positions at the Assistant Professor, Associate
Professor, and Professor levels.
The Department will take a broadly-based approach to
the study of cognition. It will be concerned with the
neurological basis of cognition, individual cognition,
cognition in social groups, and machine intelligence.
It will incorporate methods and theories from a wide
variety of disciplines including Anthropology, Computer
Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy,
Psychology, and Sociology.
We intend to develop a new curriculum for both
undergraduate and graduate students and applicants
should be interested in participating in the
construction of new approaches to the study and
teaching of cognition. We seek people whose interests
cut across conventional disciplines. Interests in
theory, computational modeling (especially PDP),
application, and education are encouraged.
Candidates should send a vita, reprints, a short letter
describing their background and interests, and names of
at least three references to:
Search Committee
Cognitive Science, C-015-v
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093
Applications received prior to January 15 will be given
the fullest consideration, however applications will be
accepted until all positions are filled. Rank and
salary will be commensurate with experience and
qualifications, and will be based upon UC pay
schedules.
Women and minorities are especially encouraged to
apply. The University of California, San Diego is an
Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 87 16:40 EDT
From: mvilain
Subject: BBN AI Seminar --John White
A METHODOLOGY FOR
DERIVING MULTILINGUAL SEMANTIC STRUCTURES
FROM MACHINE-READABLE DICTIONARIES
John S. White
Martin Marietta Corp.
BBN Laboratories Inc.
10 Moulton Street
Large Conference Room, 2nd Floor
4:00 p.m., Thursday, October 8, 1987
This paper describes a methodology for generating multilingual
taxonomic hierarchies for specific and general terminological systems,
using the lexical relations derivable from machine-readable
dictionaries (MRDs). Taxonomic structures can be optimized to form
the data foundation of a knowledge base facilitating the automatic
disambiguation of text in one language into lexical senses of terms in
the same or another language. Such a capability, in turn, contributes
a multi-directional translation dimension to automatic paraphrase and
content analysis. As part of a full natural language processing
machine translation system, the knowledge added by the MRD structures
can assist in sense selection, grammar rule-base composition, and
generation.
The methodology for the development of these structures is described
here, consisting of a manual pre-disambiguation task, and
computational creation of parallel taxonomic structures in each
language. The rationale behind deriving lexical semantic structures
in this way is discussed.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 87 12:00 EDT
From: William J. Rapaport <rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: SUNY Buffalo CS Colloq: Lexicons, by D. Walker
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
COLLOQUIUM
LEXICONS, "THE" LEXICON, AND COMPUTATION
Donald E. Walker
Artificial Intelligence and Information Science Research
Bell Communications Research
There has been a recent intensification of interest in the lexicon that
is manifest in linguistics, computational linguistics, artificial intel-
ligence, and information science. A series of workshops have brought
people from a variety of backgrounds together to discuss these develop-
ments. An attempt has been made to establish a baseline description of
our understanding of the lexicon (1) in various research areas:
linguistics, semantics, parsing, generation; (2) in relation to certain
core problems: identifying units, lexicographic practice, cognitive
analysis, lexical acquisition; (3) as it affects applications: transla-
tion, education, information retrieval, "office" systems, personal use;
and (4) in identifying relevant research resources: machine-readable
dictionaries and other reference works, lexical knowledge bases, textual
knowledge bases, products derived from interactions between lexical and
textual knowledge bases. A primary objective currently being addressed
is the development of a polytheoretical lexicon in which lexical entries
are written so the information they contain can be used by people fol-
lowing different theoretical approaches. In addition, efforts are
underway to create shareable resources that can be used by the various
groups working in this area. The long-range implications of these
activities are critical for further work on a broad range of problems
associated with natural language.
5 November 1987
3:30 P.M.
Knox 4, Amherst Campus
Coffee and danish will be served at 4:30 P.M., 224 Bell Hall
For further information, call (716) 636-2863.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 87 15:27 EDT
From: Marc Vilain <MVILAIN@G.BBN.COM>
Subject: BBN Biotech and AI Seminar -- Kimberle Koile
BBN Science Development Program
Joint Biotech and AI Seminar Series Lecture
"The Matrix of Biological Knowledge"
Kimberle Koile
BBN Labs
(KKOILE@G.BBN.COM)
BBN Labs
10 Moulton Street
2nd floor large conference room
10:30 am, Thursday October 15th
The body of experimental data in the biological sciences is immense and
growing rapidly. Its volume is so extensive that computer methods,
possibly straining the limits of current technology will be necessary to
organize the data. Moreover, it seems highly likely that there are a
significant number of as yet undiscovered ordering relations, new laws,
and predictive models embedded in the mass of existing information. To
employ this body of information productively, it will be useful to
create an extensive data/knowledge base, "the matrix of biological
knowledge," structured to provide a conceptual framework by the laws,
models, empirical generalizations, and physical foundations of the
modern biological sciences.
--- from a Santa Fe Institute press release
This talk will describe preliminary efforts to define and prototype parts of
the Matrix. These efforts took place at a summer workshop that was organized
as a result of a National Academy of Sciences report published in 1985,
"Models for Biomedical Research: A New Perspective." The workshop, sponsored
by the Santa Fe Institute with support from NIH, DOE, and several commercial
companies, was attended by fifty scientists from a variety of biology and
computer subdisciplines.
Note: A related talk on the Matrix will be given Friday morning
(announcement forthcoming) by Prof. Harold Morowitz of the
Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University.
Prof. Morowitz chaired the Committee on Models for Biomedical
Research, which produced the above mentioned report, and
co-chaired the Workshop on the Matrix of Biological Knowledge.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 87 14:50 EDT
From: William J. Rapaport <rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: Computerized Lexicography
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
CO-SPONSORS A COLLOQUIUM BY
MICHAEL SOKOLOFF
Bar Ilan University and Johns Hopkins University
COMPUTERIZED LEXICOGRAPHY:
The Case of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic
This lecture will describe the methodology employed by the speaker in
writing a dictionary of an Aramaic dialect known from literary texts of
the byzantine Era. This is the first successfully completed dictionary
of a Semitic dialect to have been produced with the aid of a computer.
Algorithms used to prepare the KWICs of the linguistic corpus highlight-
ing the problems involved when working with a Semitic language written
in a consonantal script will be discussed. Finally, the problems of
wordprocessing a bidirectional text and its preparation for printing by
a computerized typesetter will be dealt with.
Friday, October 23, 1987
12:00 noon
Clemens 1032, Amherst Campus
Co-sponsored by:
Bureau of Jewish Education of Greater Buffalo,
Department of Classics, Judaic Studies Program, Religious Studies Program,
Department of Linguistics, and Department of Computer Science
Brown-bag lunches permitted!
For further information, call (716) 636-3193.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 87 15:51 EDT
From: Tim Finin <finin@bigburd.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Subject: PROLOG AND AI APPLICATIONS - A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE
AI Seminar
UNISYS Knowledge Systems
Paoli Research Center
Paoli PA
PROLOG AND AI APPLICATIONS - A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE
Raf Venken
BIM Prolog
Raf Venken, manager for BIM Prolog Research and Development, will be
visiting Logic Based Systems on Monday, October 19th. BIM is a high
performance Prolog which runs on UNIX-based SUN workstations as well
as VAXES under VMS, UNIX 4.2, and ULTRIX. BIM is involved in joint
research efforts with various universities throughout Europe and is a
member of ESPRIT (the "European MCC"). BIM has also contributed to
LOQUI, a large natural language project.
BIM claims to be the fastest general purpose Prolog system currently
available on the market. BIM includes "the first successful attempt
to include more intelligent debugging aids into the [Prolog] system"
and a "PARTIAL EVALUATION system which optimizes Prolog programs by
source-to-source transformations." BIM has also "extended the Prolog
language with the concept of MODULES to allow the easy development of
very large systems."
The talk will cover the philosophy and strategy behind BIM Prolog,
discuss current ESPRIT projects including a large NLP system, and
speculate about the future.
11:00am, Monday, October 19th
Cafeteria Conference Room
- if you are interested in attending, please send -
- mail to finin@prc.unisys.com or call 215-648-7446 -
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 87 15:16 EDT
From: Tim Finin <finin@bigburd.PRC.Unisys.COM>
Subject: OB1: A Prolog-Based Object-Oriented Database
AI Seminar
UNISYS Knowledge Systems
Paoli Research Center
Paoli PA
OB1: A PROLOG-BASED OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASE
Benjamin Cohen
SRI International
David Sarnoff Research Center
Princeton NJ 8540
In this talk I describe OB1, an object-oriented database facility. OB1
is a hybrid query language that incorporates most of the features of
relational query languages plus "view/objects" that allow sets as
values and recursive views. OB1 is implemented in Quintus Prolog and
includes server facilities that allow C & Fortran clients to query an
OB1 server over a SUN network. OB1 also has a graphics
Entity/Relationship data modeling editor used to design OB1 databases.
Ben will be here friday, October 23, from lunch time till 5 - I suppose
the talk would start around 1:30 or 2:00
2:00pm Friday, October 23
Cafeteria Conference Room
- if you are interested in attending, please send -
- mail to finin@prc.unisys.com or call 215-648-7446 -
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 87 15:29 EDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: CSLI CAlendar, Oct. 8, 3:2
[Excerpted from CSLI Calendar]
A Logic for Practical Reasoning
Tim Flannagan, Logica Cambridge
October 15
We construct a formal logic for practical reasoning (PR) from an
analysis of Kenny's informal `logic of satisfactoriness' [K], which is
intended to preserve `satisfactoriness' in passing from premises to
conclusions just as deductive logic preserves logical truth.
Whereas Kenny's logic argues to sufficient means to ends, PR argues
both to necessary means and to sufficient means. It models intuitive
sufficiency as material implication and satisfactoriness as relative
consistency. Unlike Kenny's logic it has a precise definition of
defeasibility.
PR extends first-order logic with the following rule of inference
which we call comodus ponens. From G (understood as a goal) and C
implies G, infer C, provided that C and G are jointly consistent
relative to X (the nonlogical axioms). PR has the following
properties:
1. If A is a logical consequence of X, then it is derivable in PR from
X but the converse is false.
2. If A is derivable from X, then it is consistent with X.
3. The separate derivability of two sentences from a set X does not
imply that their conjunction is derivable. It is thus possible for
A and `not A' to be derivable without this resulting in a
contradiction.
4. PR is a defeasible logic and hence strongly nonmonotonic.
--------------
SITUATION SEMANTICS WORKING GROUP
Tuesdays 10:00-11:45, Ventura Hall
(First meeting: Tuesday, 13 October)
Contacts
Craige Roberts (Croberts@csli.stanford.edu)
Stanley Peters (Peters@csli.stanford.edu)
Members of this group will explore Situation Semantics from a
linguistic point of view. To this end we hope to first consolidate
our understanding of the theory in its current state of development,
and then use this perspective to explore some current issues in
linguistic semantics.
In keeping with the trend of current research in semantics, we
assume that three general criteria for an adequate semantic theory
are:
(i) partiality in modeling,
(ii) adequate tools for talking about context-dependence, and
(iii) ability to assign sufficiently fine-grained meanings.
We plan to entertain more specific questions and criteria as
refinements of (i), (ii), and (iii), and explore how Situation
Semantics addresses these questions and fulfills these criteria, and
how it compares in these respects with other current theories.
In order to establish a basis for discussion, at our first session
Stanley Peters will give an overview of the version of Situation
Semantics developed in Barwise and Etchemendy's THE LIAR. It might be
useful for those planning to attend to have a look at that work
beforehand. (Note: For those interested in Situation Semantics,
attendance at John Etchemendy's seminar on THE LIAR would be helpful,
but is not necessary for participation in this group.)
After some further preliminaries, there are a number of particular
issues which we hope to explore. To begin, we will focus on
conditionals and modality, linguistic phenomena which require a
semantic theory based on situations (and/or partial worlds). These
phenomena also introduce questions of context-dependence and
fine-grainedness. We will compare work on these issues within
Situation Semantics to other contemporary theories such as that of
Kratzer (in her paper on the ``Lumps of Thought''), Data Semantics
(Landman and Veltman), and to Muyskens' work on partiality in
possible-worlds semantics.
At the first meetings, other possible topics will be suggested. In
addition, participants are urged to propose topics and lead sessions
themselves in accordance with their own research interests.
Although we will focus on linguistic issues, all members of the
CSLI community, students, and visitors are invited to attend and
participate fully.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 87 20:42 EDT
From: Emma Pease <Emma@CSLI.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: CSLI Calendar, Oct. 15, 3:3
[Excerpted from CSLI Calendar]
The Acquisition of Morphology
Discussion of the debate between
Rumelhart/McClelland and Pinker/Prince
Dave Rumelhart
(der@psych.stanford.edu)
October 15
A couple of years ago Jay McClelland and I developed a connectionist
model of the process of over-regularization in the acquisition of past
tense in English. We were surprised to find how well the model
accounted for the pattern of such errors children actually make.
Recently a number of authors who are associated with rather different
accounts of these results have challenged the adequacy of our model.
The most massive of these challenges has come from a large paper (150
pages) by Steve Pinker and Alan Prince. This paper is to be published
in the journal COGNITION. Pinker and Prince challenge our work on
almost every particular. Their critique is thoughtful and carefully
done. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in their anxiety to dismiss
our work they missed the point of it. In my presentation I will: (1)
sketch our original model (2) sketch the objections raised by Pinker
and Prince, (3) explain the way in which these objections either miss
the point of our effort or are simply mistaken and finally (4) offer
my account of the real significance of our effort and the possibility
of a connectionist account of linguistic information processing.
--------------
External Language and Internal Representation
Pat Hayes
(Hayes.pa@xerox.com)
October 22
Language evolved, and is used, for communication between intelligent
agents. Internally represented information is used quite differently,
and different assumptions must be made in thinking about ways of
encoding it for use inside a mind. In particular, communication can
assume an intelligent decoder on the other end but is severely
constrained by the bandwidth of speech, while internal representations
seem to have much wider channels of communication available between
their component parts but must be explicit and detailed to an extent
that would be inappropriate for a `natural' language. I will argue
that general talk of `information' ignores this important distinction
and is therefore sometimes confusing in discussions of situated
agency.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 87 13:44 EDT
From: Maureen Searle <msearle%watsol.waterloo.edu@RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: Conference - Uses of Large Text Databases
REMINDER
University of Waterloo, Centre for the New OED
Waterloo, Ontario
Conference on the Uses of Large Text Databases
November 9th and 19th, 1987
Deadline for registration is October 15. Because of a rotating Canadian
postal strike, registrations can be made by phone (519) 885-1211 ext 6183
or by electronic mail to mjfehlner%watsol@waterloo.csnet.
Conference fees are:-
Registration $90.00 (CDN) $68.00 (U.S.)
Proceedings $20.00 (CDN) $15.00 (U.S.)
Mon. evening Dinner $30.00 (CDN) $23.00 (U.S.)
Recommended hotel is the Walper Terrace Hotel, 1 King Street West,
Kitchener, Ontario, N2G 2Z9.
Rates are $54.00 (CDN)/night (single) and $60.00 (CDN)/night (double).
Reservations should be made directly with the hotel by calling (519) 745-4321,
specifying that you are attending the conference.
Transportation from Toronto Airport to Kitchener is available from
Airways Transit at a special conference rate of $17.00 (one way).
Reservations can be made by calling (519) 578-0110, again specifying
that you are attending the conference.
If you have further questions please contact the Centre at the above
number or via electronic mail.
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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