rosner%cui.unige.chunet%ubc.CSNET@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (Mike Rosner) (01/28/86)
Fondazione Dalle Molle
Geneva
ISSCO
WORKING PAPERS
No. 46 (1981)
M Rosner
Three Strategic Goals in Conversational Openings
This paper tries to explain a short transcript of a
conversational opening as completely as possible within the
framework which takes conversational behaviour as defined by the
operation of a sohisticated planning mechanism. It is argued
that a critical role is played by the satifaction, for each
participant, of three strategic goals relating to attention,
identification, and greeting. Additional tactics for gaining
information are also described as necessary to account for this
transcript.
No. 47 (1983)
F di Primio & Th Christaller
A Poor Man's Flavor System
This paper is the result of an attempt to understand 'flavors',
the object oriented programming system in Lispmachine Lisp. The
authors argue that the basic principles of such systems are not
easily accessible to the programming public, because papers on
the subject rarely discuss concrete details. Accordingly, the
authors' approach is pedagogical, and takes the form of a
description of the evolution of their own flavor system. An
appendix contains programming examples that are sufficienly
detailed to enable an average Lisp programmer to build a flavor
system, and experiment with the essential concepts of
object-oriented programming.
No. 48 (1984)
Eric Wehrli
A Government-Binding Parser for French
This paper describes a parser for French based on an adaptation
of Chomsky's Government and Binding theory. Reflecting the
modular conception of GB-grammars, the parser consists of
several modules corresponding to some of the subtheories of the
grammar, such as X bar, binding, etc. Making an extensive use of
lexical information and following strategies which attempt to
take advantage of the basic properties of natural languages,
this parser is powerful enough to produce all of the grammatical
structures of sentences for a fairly substantial subset of
French. At the same time, it is restricted enough to avoid a
proliferation of alternative analyses, even with highly complex
constructions. Particular attention has been paid to the problem
of the grammatical interpretation of wh-phrases, to clitic
constructions, as well as to the organisation and management of
the lexicon.
No 49 (1985)
Patrick Shann
AI Approaches to Machine Translation
This paper examines some experimental AI systems that were
specifically developed for machine translation (Wilks'
Preference Semantics, the Yale projects, Salat and CONTRA). It
concentrates on the different types of meaning representation
used, and the nature of the knowledge used for the solution of
difficult problems in MT. To explore particular AI approaches,
the resolution of several types of ambiguity is discussed from
the point of view of different systems.
No. 50 (1985)
Beat Buchmann & Susan Warwick
Machine Translation: Pre-ALPAC history, Post-ALPAC overview
This paper gives a historical overview of the field of Machine
Translation (MT). The ALPAC report, the now well-known landmark
in the history of MT, serves to delimit the two sections of this
paper. The first section, Pre-ALPAC history, looks in some
detail at the hopeful beginnings, the first euphoric
developments, and the onsetting disillusionment in MT. The
second section, Post-ALPAC overview, describes more recent
developments on the basis of current prototype and commercial
systems. It also reviews some of the basic theoretical and
practical issues in the field.
No 51 (1985)
Rod Johnson & Mike Rosner
Software Engineering for Machine Translation
In this paper we discuss the desirable properties of a software
environment for MT development, starting from the position that
succesful MT depends on a coherent theory of translation. We
maintain that such an environment should not just provide for
the construction of instances of MT systems within some
preconceived (and probably weak) theoretical framework, but
should also offer tools for rapid implementation and evaluation
of a variety of experimental theories. A discussion of some
potentially interesting properties of theories of language and
translation is followed by a description of a prototype software
system which is designed to facilitate practical experimentation
with such theories.
Requests for these papers should be addressed to
ISSCO working papers
54 route des Acacias
1227 Geneva Switzerland
The price per paper, including air mail, is SFr 10 (or
equivalent). Cheques should be made payable to "Institut Dalle
Molle"