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"