LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA (05/22/85)
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI> AIList Digest Wednesday, 22 May 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 68 Today's Topics: Conference - 1985 Symposium on Logic Programming, Tutorials - Computational Linguistics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 May 1985 12:03:27-PDT From: conery%uoregon.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa Subject: Conference - 1985 Symposium on Logic Programming -- Preliminary Schedule -- -- 1985 Symposium on Logic Programming -- For more information, contact: John Conery (jc@uoregon.csnet) 503-686-4408 Jacques Cohen (jc@brandeis.csnet) 617-647-3370 MONDAY, July 15 Tutorials (Two parallel sessions, 9:00 - 4:30) (Two more tutorials on Friday) "Expert Systems Using Prolog", Bob Kowalski, Imperial College "Parallel Logic Programming", Gary Lindstrom, Univerity of Utah 8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Early Registration and Reception TUESDAY, July 16, 1985 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. Registration 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Robert Kowalski, Imperial College London, England 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PARALLELISM Semi-intelligent Backtracking of Prolog Based on a Static Data Dependency Analysis, Jung-Herng Chang and Alvin M. Despain, University of California, Berkeley User-defined Parallel Control Strategies, J. I. Glasgow, M. A. Jenkins, and C. D. McCrosky, Queen's University, Canada AND-parallelism with Intelligent Backtracking for Annotated Logic Programs, J. Maluszynski, Linkoping University and P. Dembinski, Chalmbers University of Technology, Sweden 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. EXTENSIONS An experiment in Programming with Full First-Order Logic, Zerkis D. Umrigar and Vijay Pitchumani, Syracuse University A Meta-Level Extension of Prolog, Kenneth A. Bowen, Syracuse University, and Tobias Weinberg, Digital Equipment Corporation Logic Programming Cum Applicative Programming, Nachum Dershowitz and David Plaisted, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. LANGUAGE ISSUES On the Treatment of Cuts in Prolog Source-Level Tools, R. A. O'Keefe, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom All Solutions Predicates in Prolog, Lee Naish, University of Melbourne, Australia Unification-free Execution of Logic Programs, Jan Komorowski, Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard University and Jan Maluszynski, Linkoping University, Sweden Wednesday, July 17, 1985 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. INVITED SPEAKER Dr. Herve Gallaire, European Computer Research Center, Munich, West Germany 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. CONCURRENT PROLOG Concurrent Prolog in a Multi-process Environment, Rosanna Lee and Randy Goebel, University of Waterloo, Canada A sequential Implementation of Concurrent Prolog Based on the Shallow Binding Scheme, Toshihiko Miyazaki, Akikazu Takeuchi and Takashi Chikayama, ICOT, Japan 2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. SEMANTICS The Declarative Semantics of Logical Read-only Variables, G. Levi and C. Palamidessi, Universita'di Pisa, Italy Narrowing as the Operational Semantics of Functional Languages, Uday Reddy, University of Utah Towards an Algebra for Constructing Logic Programs, R.A. O'Keefe, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom 4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES A Microcoded Unifier for Lisp Machine Prolog, Mats Carlssn, Uppsala University, Sweden SLOG: A Logic Programming Language Interpreter Based on Clausal Superposition and Rewriting, Laurent Fribourg, Laboratoires de Marcoussis, France A Real Time Garbage Collector for Prolog, Edwin Pittombils and Maurice Bruynooghe, K.U. Leuven, Belgium Evening Banquet Speaker Dr. Maurice Wilkes, Digital Equipment Corporation Thursday, July 19, 1985 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. THEORY Recursive Unsolvability of Determinacy, Solvable Cases of Determinacy, and Their Applications to Prolog Optimization, Jajime Sawamura and Taku Takeshima, International Institute for Advanced Study of Social Information Science, Japan Graph-based Logic Programming Interpreters, Jean Gallier and Stan Raatz, University of Pennsylvania Surface Deduction: A Uniform Mechanism for Logic Programming, P. T. Cox and T. Pietrzykowski, Technical University of Nova Scotia, Canada 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. SPECIAL TOPICS Towards a Programming Environment for Large Prolog Programs, Jan Chomicki and Naftaly H. Minsky, Rutgers University Modular Logic Programming of Compilers, Harald Ganzinger and Michael Hanus, University Dortmund, West Germany An(other) Integration of Logic and Functional Programming, Amitabh Srivastava, Don Oxley and Aditya Srivastava, Central Research Laboratories, Texas Instruments, Inc. A Technique for Doing Lazy Evaluation in Logic, Sanjai Narain, Rand Corp. FRIDAY July 19 Tutorials: (Two concurrent sessions, 9:00 - 4:30) "Concurrent Logic Programming Techniques", Ehud Shapiro, Weizmann Institute "Prolog and Software Engineering", Susan Gerhart, Wang Institute. ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 1985 17:39:24 PDT From: Bill Mann <MANN@USC-ISIB.ARPA> Subject: Tutorials on Computational Linguistics: July 8 TUTORIALS ON TOPICS IN COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS The conference schedule for the 1985 Association for Computational Linguistics is now available. The conference will be held July 8-12 at the University of Chicago, with the first day devoted to Tutorials in Computational Linguistics, described below. Each tutorial is a presentation of the state of the art in an important area of computational linguistics--not just the speakers' work on the subject--the whole range of approaches being actively pursued. PARSER CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES Jonathan Slocum, MCC Corporation The tutorial on Parser Construction Techniques will cover, briefly, the various approaches to parsing (algorithms) and implementation methodologies; included will be discussion of matters relating to runtime (CPU) performance. Focus will then shift to matters concerning the user interface: what tools ought to be provided to the linguist/developer, and how those tools can be tied to the central parsing program. Several different parsers employing the same user interface will be introduced (and their source code distributed in the handout). It will be assumed that participants are somewhat familiar with LISP, that they know enough about formal linguistics to understand such concepts as "context free," context sensitive," and "phrase structure grammar," and that they know what is meant by "parsing" and related technical terms from the computational perspective. PROLOG WITH NATURAL-LANGUAGE EXAMPLES Dr. Fernando C.N. Pereira, SRI International The logic programming language Prolog is becoming an important tool in artificial intelligence and, in particular, in computational linguistics. This tutorial is intended as an introduction to Prolog and its programming methodology. Rather than making an abstract presentation of the language, we will build up a vocabulary of Prolog programming concepts and techniques by examining a progression of examples that show how Prolog can be used in simple natural-language-analysis tasks. Topics covered include facts and queries; rules; the logical variable; terms as structured information; unification; axiomatization of phrase-structure grammars; definite-clause grammars; the Prolog execution model; control mechanisms (sequencing and cut); metalogical operators and alternative execution models; program transformation and embedded formalisms; the relation between Prolog and logic programming. Although there are no formal prerequisites of this course, some familiarity with elementary concepts of logic and traditional syntax would be useful. UNIFICATION APPROACHES TO GRAMMAR Stuart M. Shieber, SRI International Current trends in syntactic theory and computational syntax seem to be converging toward a type of grammatical formalism based on complex feature systems and an operation called "unification." This tutorial presents this approach to the syntax and semantics of natural language. Beginning with a characterization of the principles that underlie grammar formalisms in general, a particular simple formalism based on these ideas will be derived. Its relation to many of the currently prevalent unification-based grammar formalisms--including functional unification grammar, lexical-functional grammar, head grammar, generalized phrase-structure grammar, and definite-clause grammar--will be explicated as more general or more particular variants motivated by linguistic or computational considerations. Finally, the manner in which these approaches may be applied to the modelling of a number of linguistic constructs will be described, and the implementation of such formalisms discussed briefly. A very rudimentary knowledge of traditional syntax is recommended as a prerequisite of the course. Familiarity with Prolog, definite-clause grammar, or elementary logic would be helpful, but is not essential. Although intended as a sequel to Fernando Pereira's "Prolog with Natural Language Examples," this tutorial can be taken independently. NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACES Norman K. Sondheimer, USC/ISI and Madeleine Bates, BBN This tutorial will outline the role of natural language interfaces in man-machine interaction: their uses, limits, and technology. These systems allow a user to communicate with a computer in much the same way as he communicates with other humans. To date, english language interfaces to databases have achieved the greatest commercial success, but interfaces for other languages and applications, such as spreadsheet packages, are emerging. There are at least as many implementation technologies as systems: syntactic grammars, semantic grammars, conceptual parsers, pattern matchers, etc. Each has its strengthens and weaknesses. The greatest variability is found in language coverage, ease of developing new applications, and, of course, cost. Current research promises to improve the integration of natural language with other types of interfaces and support extended human-machine conversations. Nevertheless, they will not be appropriate for every application. The purpose of this tutorial will be to introduce the technology and allow the attendee to evaluate the alternatives. WHO SHOULD ATTEND: designers, managers, and users of human-machine interfaces. This tutorial is aimed primarily at the individual who requires the information to understand or evaluate natural language interfaces, but who is not now a natural language processing professional. It should also be of use to more experienced individuals seeking a survey current applied state-of-the-art. About the instructors: Dr. Norman Sondheimer is a computer scientist at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute and past President of the Association for Computational Linguistics. His research has been into natural language understanding. Dr. Madeleine Bates is one of the primary architects of BBN'S IRUS, a highly advanced nl system, and has developed other systems in speech understanding, text generation, intelligent computer assisted instruction, interfaces to databases and human factors studies. She is currently President of the ACL. Both instructors have more than a decade of research and development experience in AI and have authored numerous publications. SPEECH RECOGNITION AND SYNTHESIS Dr. Jared Bernstein SRI International Dr. Beatrice T. Oshika System Development Corporation The tutorial will include a review of commercial speech recognition and synthesis products, metrics for evaluation, and research issues crucial to continued development. The synthesis section will discuss the linguistic and phonetic problems to be solved in designing text-to-speech systems, including letter-to-sound conversion, prosodic assignment and spectral composition. The recognition section will cover the problems associated with modelling continuous speech, including discussion of phonological variation, lexical retrieval and matching, and control structures required to handle multiple sources of knowledge. Familiarity with phonology and data structures is helpful but not required. Dr. Jared Bernstein is a Senior Computer Scientist at SRI International working on applied speech recognition projects, and has ten years experience in speech synthesis and speech processing. At Telesensory Systems he led the effort that resulted in the Prose 2000 text-to-speech converter. Prior to that he was with the MIT Speech Communication Group working on speech perception, phonetics and the analysis of deaf speech. Dr. Beatrice T. Oshika is manager of the Research and Development program at System Development Corporation and has seventeen years experience in linguistics and speech processing. At Speech Communications Research Laboratory she was responsible for formulation and testing of phonological rules in conversational speech as part of the DARPA Speech Understanding Research program in the 1970s. Each tutorial is a half-day in length. They cost only $50 each, including handouts. The conference brochure and registration form for both the tutorials and the paper presentations are available from Don Walker Bell Communications Research 445 South Street, MRE 2A379 Morristown, NJ 07960 USA on the ARPANET: bellcore!walker@berkeley.arpa ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************