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NL-KR Digest Volume 04 No. 31
NL-KR Digest (3/24/88 15:35:30) Volume 4 Number 31
Today's Topics:
SUNY Buffalo Comp. Sci. Colloq: David McDonald
SUNY BUffalo Cognitive Science: Ann Banfield
SUNY Buffalo Cog/Ling Sci: Ivan Sag
Unisys AI Seminar, Remo Pareschi, 4/22
seminar - The nature of children's early wh-questions
Language & Cognition seminar
Call for Papers - IJCAI 89 in Detroit
New Chair in CL
Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 88 10:12 EST
From: William J. Rapaport <sunybcs!rapaport@AMES.ARC.NASA.GOV>
Subject: SUNY Buffalo Comp. Sci. Colloq: David McDonald
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
COLLOQUIUM
From Water to Wine:
Generating Natural Language Text from Today's Applications Programs
Dr. David D. McDonald
Brattle Research Corporation
Today's AI programs all too often cut corners in the
conceptual models they reason with. To generate natural
sounding texts from these models one needs to compensate for
these semantic deficits but without compromising the princi-
pled grammatical treatments in the generator. I will talk
about how the interface to our text generator, Mumble-86,
handles these problems, using an example from a knowledge-
based mission-planning system. Looking to the future, I will
discuss what we have learned about how to correct some of
the deficits, including locality of type information, anno-
tating units according to their use and context, and a more
versatility in the representational formalism to allow for
alternative perspectives on the same facts.
Date: Thursday, 10th March, 1988
Time: 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Place: Bell 337, Amherst Campus
Wine and cheese will be served at 4:30 pm at Bell 224.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 88 16:53 EST
From: William J. Rapaport <rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: SUNY BUffalo Cognitive Science: Ann Banfield
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO
GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
PRESENTS
ANN BANFIELD
Department of English
University of California at Berkeley
THE LINGUISTICS OF SUBJECTIVITY IN NARRATIVE
Dr. Banfield will talk about her most recent work concerning the issues
of non-narrated text, "point of view", and the philosophy of language as
it relates to subjectivity in narrative.
Using such disparate sources as Chomskyan linguistics, Russell's theory
of egocentric particulars, and Auerbach's notion of mimesis, and bring-
ing them to bear on the writings of Virginia Woolf, Gustave Flaubert,
and other English and French novelists, Dr. Banfield produces strong and
interesting assertions about the nature of narrative. Two of her most
controversial assertions are that the communication model of language is
inappropriate to a theory of subjectivity in narrative and that not all
narratives have narrators. Building on the tradition of generative
grammar rather than on structuralist principles of linguistics, Banfield
brings a fresh perspective to current debates on the status of linguis-
tics for narrative theory.
Dr. Banfield's argument for a falsifiable narrative theory, presented
most fully in her 1982 book _Unspeakable Sentences_ (Routledge & Kegan
Paul), has provoked considerable interest and controversy in the fields
of literary linguistics, narrative theory, and the poetics of style. In
addition, her theories have the potential to stimulate new discussion in
such related fields as linguistic pragmatics, artificial intelligence,
and the philosophy of the subject.
Thursday, March 24, 1988
4:00 P.M.
280 Park, Amherst Campus
There will be an evening discussion with Dr. Banfield at the home of
Erwin Segal, 101 Carriage Circle, Amherst. For further information,
call Bill Rapaport (Dept. of Computer Science, 636-3193 or 3180) or Gail
Bruder (Dept of Psychology, 636-3676).
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 88 18:17 EST
From: William J. Rapaport <rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: SUNY Buffalo Cog/Ling Sci: Ivan Sag
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO
The Steering Committee of the
GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH INITIATIVE IN
COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC SCIENCES
PRESENTS
IVAN A. SAG
Department of Linguistics
Stanford University and University of Chicago
LINGUISTIC THEORY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
In this talk, I outline one view of how the concerns of Cognitive Sci-
ence impose constraints on the design of linguistic theories. I
emphasize the importance of such design properties as monotonicity,
simultaneous constraint satisfaction, declarativeness, and reversibility
of grammars. Despite many appearances to the contrary, much of modern
linguistic theory can be formulated in such terms. Pollard and Sag's
"Information-Based Syntax and Semantics" (1987, to appear), is in fact
an attempt to weave results from a number of diverse traditions (LFG,
GPSG, GB, Categorial Grammar, and Unification-Based Grammar Formalisms)
into a sound theoretical framework that has just such design properties.
I will survey several results of this research program and offer sugges-
tions about directions for future research that integrates comprehensive
linguistic descriptions so designed with models of language processing.
Monday, March 21, 1988
4:15 P.M.
280 Park, Amherst Campus
There will also be an informal evening discussion at Judy Duchan's
house, 130 Jewett Parkway, at a time to be announced. Call Bill Rapa-
port (Dept. of Computer Science, 636-3193 or 3180) for further informa-
tion.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 88 16:30 EST
From: finin@PRC.Unisys.COM
Subject: Unisys AI Seminar, Remo Pareschi, 4/22
AI SEMINAR
UNISYS PAOLI RESEARCH CENTER
A Definite Clause Version of Categorial Grammar
Remo Pareschi
University of Pennsylvania
Categorial Grammar is a framework for natural language analysis where
grammatical constituents are viewed either as functions or arguments,
and are associated with corresponding syntactic types. We introduce a
first-order version of such a framework, based on the idea of encoding
syntactic types as definite clauses. Thus, we drop all explicit
requirements of adjacency between combinable constituents, and we
capture word-order constraints simply by allowing subformulae of
complex types to share variables ranging over string positions. We are
in this way able to account for constructions involving discontinuous
constituents. Such constructions are difficult to handle in the
more traditional version of Categorial Grammar, which is based on
the idea of strict string adjacency between combinable constituents.
The second half of this enterprise consists of showing how, for this
formalism, parsing can be implemented as theorem proving. Our
approach to encoding types as definite clauses presupposes a
modification of standard Horn logic syntax to allow internal
implications in definite clauses. This modification is needed to
account for the types of higher-order functions and, as a consequence,
standard Prolog-like Horn logic theorem proving is not powerful
enough. We tackle this problem by treating implication as in
intuitionistic logic. Such a treatment has been proposed elsewhere as
a useful extension of Prolog for implementing hypothetical reasoning
and modular logic programming, and finds here an application of
general interest for computational linguistics. In fact, this same
approach to the types of higher-order functions in Categorial Grammar
can be used for the mechanism of unbounded dependencies in Generalized
Phrase Structure Grammar. In both cases, the semantic interpretation
of sen- tences can be made to follow directly from the process of
proving their syntactic well-formedness.
3:30 pm Tuesday, March 22
Unisys Paloi Research Center
Route 252 and Central Ave.
Paoli PA 19311
-- non-Unisys visitors who are interested in attending should --
-- send email to finin@prc.unisys.com or call 215-648-7446 --
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 88 14:57 EST
From: Anurag.Acharya@CENTRO.SOAR.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: seminar - The nature of children's early wh-questions
Computation Linguistics Research Seminar
The nature of children's early wh-questions
Karin Stromswold
M.I.T. and Harvard Medical School
3:00-4:00pm, Thursday,
March 24, 1988
Scaife Hall 220
Carnegie Mellon University
Wh-questions have been the subject of a great deal of recent
linguistic research. Which, if any, of the recently proposed analyses
of wh-questions are supported by developmental data? Using a computer
search, I culled all of the wh-questions asked in the CHILDes transcripts
of 12 children between the ages 0;11 and 6;6. This yielded a corpus of
over 16,000 wh-questions. I used this corpus to answer the following
two questions:
1. Are subject questions gapless?
2. Do argument and adjunct questions differ structurally?
In my talk, I will argue that the developmental data suggest that subject
questions do have gaps and that argument and adjunct questions have
different structural representations.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 88 11:31 EST
From: Dori Wells <DWELLS@G.BBN.COM>
Subject: Language & Cognition seminar
BBN Science Development Program
Language & Cognition Seminar Series
PLANNING COHERENT MULTISENTENTIAL TEXT
Eduard Hovy
Information Sciences Institute of USC
4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90282-6695
BBN Laboratories Inc.
10 Moulton Street
Large Conference Room, 2nd Floor
10:30 a.m., Thursday, March 31, 1988
Abstract: Generating multisentential text is hard. Though most text
generators are capable of simply stringing together more than one sentence,
they cannot determine coherent order. Very few programs attempt to plan
out the structure of multisentential paragraphs.
Clearly, the key notion is coherence. The reason some paragraphs are
coherent is that the information in successive sentences follows some
pattern of inference or of knowledge with which the hearer is familiar,
so that the hearer is able to relate each part to the whole. To signal
such inferences, people usually link successive blocks of text in one
of a fixed set of ways. The inferential nature of such linkage was
noted by Hobbs in 1978. In 1982, McKeown built schemas (scripts) for
constructing some paragraphs with stereotypical structure. Around
the same time, after a wide-ranging linguistic study, Mann proposed
a relatively small number of intersentential relations that suffice to
bind together coherently most of the things people tend to speak about.
The talk will describe a prototype text structurer that is based on the
inferential ideas of Hobbs, uses Mann's relations, and is more general
than the schema applier built by McKeown. The structurer takes the form
of a standard hierarchical expansion planner, in which the relations
act as plans and their constraints on relation fillers (represented
in a formalism similar to Cohen and Levesque's work) as subgoals in the
expansion. The structurer is conceived as part of a general text planner,
but currently functions on its own. It is being tested in two domains:
database output and expert system explanantion.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 88 21:31 EST
From: Sridharan <sridhara@cel.fmc.com>
Subject: Call for Papers - IJCAI 89 in Detroit
Eleventh International Joint Conference on
Artificial Intelligence
Detroit, Michigan U.S.A
August 20 thru 26 1989
The International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI)
continue to be the premier forum for international scientific
exchange and presentation of AI research. The next conference will
be held in Detroit, Michigan USA from August 20 through August 26,
1989. The conference is sponsored by the International Joint
Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Inc. (IJCAII) and is co-
sponsored and hosted by the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence (AAAI) and a broadly-based consortium of academic,
industrial and governmental institutions in the Southeastern
Michigan region.
The conference is designed to give representation to all subfields of
AI including research of all kinds. The conference will also highlight
the relationship of AI to other related disciplines. The technical
program will comprise a Paper Track focusing on empirical,
analytical, theoretical, conceptual, foundational aspects and applied
research; and a Videotape Track focusing on applications in all
subfields best suited for this form of presentation.
The Eleventh IJCAI will feature:
o an outstanding technical program;
o state-of-the-art exhibit of AI related hardware and software;
o stimulating and informative tutorials;
o special events that include prizes, awards, panels and workshops;
o visits to academic and industrial research centers and
o automobile manufacturing plants; and
o an interesting variety of extra-conference activities.
The official language of the conference is English, both for papers
and videotapes. The major areas and subareas are indicated below.
A. AI Tools and Technologies
A1. Machine Architectures, Languages, Shells
A2. Parallel and Distributed Processing
A3. Real-Time Performance
B. Fundamental Problems, Methods, Approaches
B1. Search Methods
B2. Knowledge Acquisition, Learning, Analogy
B3. Cognitive Modeling
B4. Planning, Scheduling, Reasoning about Actions
B5. Automated Deduction
B6. Patterns of Commonsense Reasoning
B7. Other issues in Knowledge Representation
C. Fundamental Applications
C1. Natural Language, Speech Understanding and Generation
C2. Perception, Vision, Robotics
C3 Intelligent Tutoring Systems
C4. Design, Manufacturing, Control
D. Perspectives and Attitudes
D1. Philosophical Foundations
D2. Social Implications
Submission Requirements and Guidelines
Important Dates
Submissions must be postmarked by: December 12, 1988
Notification of acceptance or rejection: March 27, 1989
Edited version to be produced by: April 27, 1989
Conference: August 20-26, 1989
Program Chair: Paper submissions, reviewing, invited talks, panels,
awards and all matters related to the technical program.
Dr. N.S. Sridharan
FMC Corporation, Central Engineering Labs.
1205 Coleman Avenue, Box 580
Santa Clara, CA 95052 USA
(408) 289-0315 sridharan@cel.fmc.com
Videotape Track Chair: For videotape submissions, editing and
scheduling of video presentations.
Dr. John Birk
Hewlett-Packard Labs.
3500 Deer Creek Road, P.O. Box 10350
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1317 USA
(415) 857-2568 birk@hplabs.hp.com
Other Contacts:
Local Arrangements Chair: Enquiries about local arrangements.
Dr. Ramasamy Uthurusamy
General Motors Research Laboratories
Computer Science Department
Warren, Michigan, 48090-9055 USA
(313) 986-1989 samy%gmr@relay.cs.net
Tutorials, Exhibits and Registration:
Ms. Claudia Mazzetti
AAAI Office, 445 Burgess Drive, Suite 100
Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA
(415) 328-3123
General Chair: For all general conference related matters.
Professor Wolfgang Bibel
Computer Science, University of British Columbia
6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, B.C.
V6T 1W5 Canada
(604) 228-3061 bibel@ubc.csnet
IJCAII Secretary-Treasurer:
Dr. Donald Walker
AI and Information Science Research
Bell Communications Research
445 South Street, MRE 2A379
Morristown, NJ 07960-1961 USA
(201) 829-4312 walker@flash.bellcore.com
Paper Track Submission:
Authors should submit five (5) copies of their papers in hard copy
form. Papers should be a minimum of 2000 words (about four pages
single spaced) to a maximum of 5000 words (about 10 pages single
spaced). Papers should be printed on 8.5"x11.0" or European A4
sized paper, with 1.5" margins, using 12 pt type and be of letter-
quality print (no dot matrix printouts). Each full page figure counts
for 500 words.
Each paper should contain the following information:
o Title of paper
o Full names of all authors and complete addresses
o Abstract of 100-200 words
o Length of the paper in words
o The area/subarea in which the paper should be reviewed
o Declaration of multiple submissions.
If the paper submitted to IJCAI-89 is similar in substance or form to
another paper submitted to other major conferences in 1989, this
must be declared by the author.
Papers will be uniformly subject to peer review. Selection criteria
include accuracy and originality of ideas, clarity and significance of
results and the quality of the presentation. Late submissions will be
automatically rejected without review. The decision of the Program
Committee will be final and cannot be appealed. Papers selected will
be scheduled for presentation and will be printed in the Proceedings.
Videotape Track Submission:
Authors should submit one (1) copy of a videotape of 15 minutes
maximum duration, of applied research, accompanied by a
submission letter that includes
o Title
o Full names of authors and complete addresses
o Tape format (indicate one of NTSC, PAL or SECAM; and one of VHS
or .75" U-matic)
o Duration of tape in minutes
o An abstract not to exceed 100 words.
Late submissions will be automatically rejected without review.
Tapes will not be returned; authors must retain extra copies for
making revisions. All submissions will be converted to NTSC format
before review. Permission to copy for review purposes is
required and authors should indicate this in the submission letter.
This track is reserved for displaying interesting applications to real-
world problems arising in industrial, commercial, space, defense and
educational arenas. This track is designed to demonstrate the
current level of usefulness of AI tools, techniques and methods.
Tapes will be reviewed and selected for presentation during the
conference. The following criteria will guide the selection:
o Level of interest to the conference audience
o Clarity of goals, methods and results
o Presentation quality (including audio, video and pace)
Preference will be given to applications that show a good level of
maturity. Tapes which are deemed to be advertising commercial
products, propaganda, purely expository materials, merely taped
lectures or other material not of scientific or technical value will be
rejected.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 88 09:08 EST
From: Jock McNaught <jock@CCL.UMIST.AC.UK>
Subject: New Chair in CL
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
(UMIST)
Department of Language and Linguistics
and
Centre for Computational Linguistics
CHAIR IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
Applications are invited for a new chair in Computational
Linguistics whose purpose is to provide new leadership in this
subject field and generally to strengthen the department's
research base. Candidates should have a strong record of
academic and/or professional experience within the broad field of
computation applied to natural language processing. The
department's well-established and funded Centre for Computational
Linguistics concentrates on postgraduate studies and largely
applied research. The successful applicant is expected to play a
leading part in the stimulation of research as well as
developing teaching programmes and generally contributing to the
administration of the department.
Informal enquiries may be made to Professor J C Sager or the
Registrar.
Salary will be in the professorial range with a minimum of 23,380
pounds sterling per annum (max. permitted average 28,820 pounds
sterling). Requests for application forms and further particulars
should be sent to the Registrar, Room B9, UMIST, P O Box 88,
Manchester M60 1QD, United Kingdom, to whom completed application
forms should be returned as soon as possible.
UMIST is an equal opportunities employer.
E-mail contact addresses:
jcs%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ean-relay.ac.uk (ean)
jcs%ccl.umist.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (arpa)
jcs%ccl.umist.ac.uk@ac.uk (earn)
$...!ukc!ccl.umist.ac.uk!jock (uucp)
Telephone: +44.61.236.3311 extension 2333
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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