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NL-KR Digest Volume 05 No. 02
NL-KR Digest (7/11/88 19:21:00) Volume 5 Number 2
Today's Topics:
ON applying AI
Re: Word for word translations
Re: Grammatic number of quantifiers (NL-KR Digest V4 #64)
Re: presupposition
Seminar - Bilingual Children As Translators
Fifth Israeli Symposium on Artificial Intelligence
SPEECH SCIENCE & TECH. CONFERENCE SST-88
Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 88 14:18 EDT
From: Bruce E. Nevin <bnevin@cch.bbn.com>
Subject: ON applying AI
The following is excerpted without permission from The Boston Globe
Magazine for June 26, 1988, pp. 39-42 of the cover article by D. C.
Denison entitled "The ON team, software whiz Mitch Kapor's new venture":
In the conference room, where the ON team has assembled for a group
interview, a question is posed: What developments in artificial
intelligence have made their project possible?
The first response comes immediately: "The lack of progress."
Then William Woods, ON's principal technologist, takes a turn. "What
came out of artificial intelligence that's useful to us is kind of
like what came out of the space program that's useful for everybody on
Earth --"
"Velcro," someone interrupts.
"Tang." From the other side of the table. "Are we the Tang of
artificial intelligence?"
Woods continues undaunted. "Artificial intelligence has given us a
tool kit of engineering techniques. AI has been dirven by people
who've been tilting at windmills, but their techniques are pretty good
for what we want to do."
<Paragraph on Bill's background & experience omitted>
Although the early promise of artificial-intelligence research has
been tempered--we still don't have computers that can understand
English or reason like a human expert--the possibilities are so
seductive, so intriguing, and so potentially profitable that the field
continues to attract some of the best minds in the computer field.
Which is why it wans't surprising that when Mitchell Kapor left Lotus
two years ago, he became a visiting scholar at MIT's Center for
Cognitive Science, a leading center of artifial-intelligence-related
research. And it's not at all surprising that when Kapor and [Peter]
Miller put together the ON team, at least one AI veteran of Woods'
stature was part of the group.
Yet "artificial intelligence" has become such a buzzword, such an
umbrella term, that when the topic is brought up, experts such as
Woods and interested explorers such as Kapro take deep breaths and try
to redefine the terms of discussion.
"When you talk about AI," Kapor says, "you're talking about many, many
things at once: a body of research, certain kinds of goals and
aspirations that are characteristic of the people who are in it,
certain fields of inquiry; you've got soft stuff, you've got hard
stuff, you have mythology--the term 'AI' casts a broad shadow.
"I also think there's a reason why so much attention is paid to the AI
question in the nontechnical press," he continues, "and that is that
there are some very bombastic people in the AI community who have
spoken incredibly irresponsibly, who've made careers out of that. But
if you make the assumption that because AI gets a lot of attention in
the press there's a lot going on in the field, you might be making a
big mistake."
When kapor and Woods first met soon after Kapor left Lotus, they
discovered that they shared a similar view of the value of current AI
research. First of all, they both felt that the goal most often
attributed to artificial-intelligence research--the creation of a
computer that "thinks" just like a human--was so remote as to be
essentially impossible. Kapor's experience at MIT had convinced him
that scientists still have no idea how people really think.
Therefore, any attempt to design a computer that works the way people
think is doomed.
A more realistic approach, according to Kapor, would be to design
computer programs that are compatible with the way people think, that
help amplify a person's intelligence rather than try to duplicate it.
Kapor felt that some artificial-intelligence techniques, when applied
to that goal, could be very powerful.
<Another bg paragraph omitted>
Last year, Woods, who was working at Applied Expert Systems,
discovered that Kaapor had leased a floor in the same building, and he
began stopping in for informal conversations. Eventually, after
discussing the ON Technology project with Kapor and Miller, and
studying their business plan, he accepted the position of principal
technologist and moved his things down two floors into a large corner
office.
<paragraph omitted about micros such as Mac II getting more memory>
One of the possibilities [that opens up], which Woods will be actively
working on during the next two years, is a more sympathetic fit
between people and their computers. "I want to take an abstract
perspective of what people's mental machinery does very well and what
a machine can do well," Woods says, "and design ways that you can
couple the two together to complement each other. For example,
machines can do long sequences of complicated steps without leaving
out one. People will forget something with frequency. On the other
hand, people can walk down the street without falling in holes. To
get a mechanical artifact to do that is a challenge that hasn't even
been aapproximately approached after several decades of research."
Woods pauses to frame his thoughts. "But if you could get the right
interface technology and conceptual framework, on the machine side, to
match up with what people really want to do on our side--that would be
a very nice arrangement.
Bruce Nevin
bn@cch.bbn.com
<usual_disclaimer>
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 88 04:58 EDT
From: rutgers!gatech!sbmsg1!bpa!temvax!pacsbb!swiener
Subject: Re: Word for word translations
I must protest that Scott Horne's "word-for-word" translation of a few
Chinese paragraphs is a stacked deck, due to his definition of "word."
Horne translates tai4-tai, word for word, as "grand grand." Few people
could accurately translate "grand grand" to mean "wife." However, I would
submit that tai4-tai is in fact a single word meaning "wife."
Intuitively, this is certainly easier for language students to grasp.
The Chinese linguist Yuen-Ren Chao, in his _Mandarin Primer_, writes:
Chinese scholars recognize two kinds of word-like subunits in
speech. The commonest small change of everyday speech is the
monosyllable or tzyh [zi4]. . . . Western Sinologists have
called tzyh a "word."
But if we analyze the structure of Chinese sentences, we shall
find that the syntactic subunits which are capable of being
uttered independently or combined with a high degree of freedom
are not always monosyllables, but often combinations of two or more
syllables. Such syntactic units, whether of one or more syllables,
are more like the words of other languages. There is, however,
no common Chinese name for them. Chinese grammarians call them
tsyr [ci2], which is a learned term and not an everyday word.
This excerpt, by the way, is from the most delightful language textbook
I've ever used. The first 81 pages are a (somewhat dated) discussion of
Chinese linguistics and related issues, which I'd strongly recommend
to any linguist who would like to become more familiar with Chinese
(without actually learning the language).
--
Stewart Wiener
UUCP: {rutgers,ihnp4}!bpa!temvax!pacsbb!swiener
Internet: swiener@pacsbb.UUCP, maybe.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 88 15:18 EDT
From: David H. West <umix!umich!eecs.umich.edu!itivax!dhw@uunet.UU.NET>
Subject: Re: Grammatic number of quantifiers (NL-KR Digest V4 #64)
> Date: Thu, 23 Jun 88 11:37 EDT From: morgan@clio.las.uiuc.edu Subject:
>
> Don't expect the facts of agreement to be rational. They aren't. For
> example,
>
> More than one student was/*were arrested. Fewer than two students
> were/*was arrested.
On the other hand, with something like
None of them are/?is coming.
rationality will certainly not help decide between singular and plural.
(Is there a language with a separate grammatical number for no
actors?)
> Another example: decimal fractions <= 1.0 take plural agreement. For
> example,
>
> On the average, .34 (pronounced 'point three four') babies were born
> each month.
It's the number of the noun, not the presence of the fraction, that
controls. That example could alternatively have been phrased as
On the average, .34 of a baby was born each month.
It's no less strange-sounding than the other, but also no more so.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 88 10:46 EDT
From: Graeme Hirst <gh%aipna.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSS.CS.UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: presupposition
In a recent article, Ching-Yuan Tsai asks about presuppositions of
sentences in which a false belief is reported. The confusion caused
by such sentences lies in considering presuppositions to be a property
of a sentence rather than of an agent. The agent is usually the
speaker or hearer of a sentence, but can be a third party.
An approach that treats presuppositions as beliefs, using an
underlying belief logic, is reported in a paper "Presuppositions as
beliefs" by Diane Horton and myself, to be presented at the COLING
conference next month. A longer version of the paper, and/or the
thesis on which it is based, may be obtained by writing to
Diane Horton
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Toronto, CANADA M5S 1A4
-----
>>Graeme Hirst, Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh
>>[usually at Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 88 09:41 EDT
From: Dori Wells <DWELLS@G.BBN.COM>
Subject: Lang. & Cognition Seminar
BBN Science Development Program
Language & Cognition Seminar Series
BILINGUAL CHILDREN AS TRANSLATORS: RECOGNIZING AND CAPITALIZING
ON NATURAL ABILITIES IN LANGUAGE MINORITY STUDENTS
Sheila M. Shannon
Research Associate, Department of Psychology
Yale University
BBN Laboratories
10 Moulton Streeet
Large Conference Room, 2nd Floor
10:30 a.m., Tuesday, July 12, 1988
Abstract: Recent research in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics,
and language pedadgogy has looked at translation (oral) and
interpretation (written) activities and skills in bilingual children.
Earlier work on translation strictly dealt with the professional field
of translation and interpretation, and not with the spontaneous kinds
of translating in which bilinguals engage. This presentation reviews
the more recent work in the three disciplines with a focus on the
author's own work in sociolinguistics and pedadgogy. I examine the
nature of translation skills and ways they naturally emerge as a
benefit to being bilingual; explore ways that cognitive, linguistic,
and social abilities are involved in translation activity; consider
how these abilities may be integrated into language classroom
experiences; and assess a pilot program based on translation exercises
implemented in one classroom. The work presented here fundamentally
concerns itself with bilingual children of language minority
communities in this country--those who require our greatest efforts to
insure their academic success. I present work carried out with one
Mexican American community in California and a Puerto Rican community
in Connecticut.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 88 13:14 EDT
From: udi@WISDOM.BITNET
Subject: Fifth Israeli Symposium on Artificial Intelligence
Call For Papers
Fifth Israeli Symposium on Artificial Intelligence
Tel-Aviv, Ganei-Hata`arucha,
December 27-28, 1988
The Israeli Symposium on Artificial Intelligence is the annual meeting
of the Israeli Association for Artificial Intelligence, which is a SIG
of the Israeli Information Processing Association. Papers addressing
all aspects of AI, including, but not limited to, the following
topics, are solicited:
- AI and education
- AI languages, logic programming
- Automated reasoning
- Cognitive modeling
- Expert systems
- Image understanding, pattern recognition and analysis
- Inductive inference, learning and knowledge acquisition
- Knowledge theory, logics of knowledge
- Natural language processing
- Perception, machine vision
- Planning and search
- Robotics
This year, the conference is held in cooperation with the SIG on
Vision, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, and in
conjunction with the Tenth Israeli Conference on CAD and Robotics.
There will be a special track devoted to Vision, Image Processing
and Pattern Recognition. Joint activities with the Confernece on CAD
and Robotics include the openning session, a session on Robotics
and AI, and the exhibition.
Submitted papers will be refereed by the program committee, listed
below. Authors should submit 4 _camera-ready_ copies of a full paper or
an extended abstract of at most 15 A4 pages. Accepted papers will
appear without revision in the proceedings. Submissions prepared on a
laser printed are preferred. The first page should contain the title,
the author(s), affiliation, postal address, e-mail address, and
abstract, followed immediately by the body of the paper. Page numbers
should appear in the bottom center of each page. Use 1 inch margin
and single column format.
Submitted papers should be received at the following address by
October 1st, 1988:
Ehud Shapiro
5th ISAI
The Weizmann Institute of Science
Rehovot 76100, Israel
The conference program will be advertized at the end of October. It
is expected that 30 minutes will be allocated for the presentation of
each paper, including question time.
Program Committee
Moshe Ben-Bassat, Tel-Aviv University
Martin Golumbic, IBM Haifa Scientific Center
Ehud Gudes, Ben-Gurion University
Tamar Flash, Weizmann Institute of Science
Yoram Moses, Weizmann Institute of Science
Uzzi Ornan, Technion
Gerry Sapir, ITIM
Ehud Shapiro (chair), Weizmann Institute of Science
Jeff Rosenschein, Hebrew University
Shimon Ullman, Weizmann Institute of Science
Hezy Yeshurun, Tel-Aviv University
Secreteriate
Israeli Association for Information Processing
Kfar Hamacabia
Ramat-Gan 52109, Israel
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 88 01:59 EDT
From: Michael Wagner <munnari!csadfa.oz.au!miw@uunet.UU.NET>
Subject: SPEECH SCIENCE & TECH. CONFERENCE SST-88
The 2nd Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology,
SST-88, will be held at Macquarie University in Sydney from 29 November to
1 December 1988. The Conference will address all areas related to Speech
Science and Technology, specifically
Speech synthesis & voice response systems
Automatic speech recognition & understanding
Speaker verification & identification
Speech analysis & reconstruction
Speech coding, compression & encryption
Acoustic phonetics & speech production
Speech disorders & speech aids for the disabled
Speech technology applications
The 2 keynote speakers are:
Dr James Flanagan, Director, Information Principles Research Laboratory, AT&T
Dr Anthony Bladon, Director, Phonetics Laboratory, Oxford University
The Conference will be preceded by a 1-day speech science and technology
tutorial on 28 November.
Submission of papers: Prospectice authors are invited to submit a 400-word
summary to Dr M. Wagner, SST-88 Program Coordinator, Dept of Computer Science,
University College/ADFA, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia, Tel. (062)688955,
Fax (062)688581, Telex AA62030adfadm, ACSnet: miw@csadfa.oz,
UUCP: ...!uunet!munnari!csadfa.oz!miw, ARPA: miw%csadfa.oz@uunet.uu.net,
JANET: csadfa.oz!miw@ukc
to be RECEIVED by 8 August 1988. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of
their papers by 22 August and photo-ready papers are due by 17 October 1988.
Conference registration A$195 (A$230 after 17 October), Full-time students
A$65, Tutorial registration A$180 (A$215 after 17 October), Full-time students
A$10.
Further information from Prof. J.E. Clark, SST-88 Secretary, Speech Hearing &
Language Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia,
Tel. (02)8058784 or 8058782, Fax (02)8874752, Telex AA122377macuni,
ACSnet: sr_mail@mqccvaxa.mq.oz
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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