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.