ylfink@water.waterloo.edu (ylfink) (02/13/89)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO SEMINAR ACTIVITIES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR - Thursday, February 16, 1989 Dr. Janyce M. Wiebe, SUNY, Buffalo, New York, will speak on ``Recognizing Characters' Thoughts and Perceptions''. TIME: 3:30 PM ROOM: DC 1304 ABSTRACT This research is a computational investigation of how readers recognize characters' thoughts and perceptions (subjective sentences) in third-person narrative text. Subjective sentences reveal the emotions, plans, goals, and beliefs of the thinking or perceiving character (the subjective character), and so recognizing them is essential to narrative understanding. The problem addressed is that subjective sentences and their subjective characters are often not explicitly identified in the text. I will present an algorithm that decides whether the current sentence is subjective, and, if so, who the subjective character is, from the features of the current sentence and from what came before in the text. How knowledge is acquired from references about the subjective character's beliefs will also be discussed.