nl-kr-request@CS.RPI.EDU (NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty) (03/30/91)
NL-KR Digest (Fri Mar 29 16:26:05 1991) Volume 8 No. 13 Today's Topics: IJCAI'91 CFP - Software Engineering for Knowledge Based Systems IJCAI CFP: Natural Language Learning IJCAI CFP - Theoretical & Practical Design of Rational Agents IJCAI CFP: computational approaches to non-literal language Cils Calendar Submissions: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Requests, policy: nl-kr-request@cs.rpi.edu Back issues are available from host archive.cs.rpi.edu [128.213.10.18] in the files nl-kr/Vxx/Nyy (ie nl-kr/V01/N01 for V1#1), mail requests will not be promptly satisfied. If you can't reach `cs.rpi.edu' you may want to use `turing.cs.rpi.edu' instead. BITNET subscribers: we now have a LISTSERVer for nl-kr. You may send submissions to NL-KR@RPIECS and any listserv-style administrative requests to LISTSERV@RPIECS. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: jansen@syd.dit.csiro.au Subject: IJCAI'91 CFP - Software Engineering for Knowledge Based Systems Message-ID: <1991Mar19.042955.2226@mel.dit.csiro.au> Sender: usenet@mel.dit.csiro.au (usenet mail contact) Reply-To: jansen@syd.dit.csiro.au Organization: CSIRO DIT (Melb.) Date: Tue, 19 Mar 91 04:29:55 GMT IJCAI-91 Workshop Call for Papers Workshop Title: Software Engineering for Knowledge-Based Systems Contacts Please direct all submissions to Dr. Jansen Asia Pacific: Dr. Bob Jansen CSIRO Division of Information Technology PO Box 1599 North Ryde NSW 2113 Australia ph: +61 2 887 9489 fax: +61 2 888 7787 email: jansen@syd.dit.csiro.au North America : Professor John Carlis Department of Computer Science University of Minneapolis 207 Church St. SE Minneapolis Minnesota 55455 USA ph: +1 612 625 6092 fax: +1 612 625 0572 email: carlis@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu Europe: Mr. Jyrki Kontio Development Manager Knowledge Technology Nokia Research Centre PO Box 156 SF-02101 Espoo Finland ph: +358 0 43 76 15 86 fax: +358 0 45 52 091 email: J_Kontio@eurokom.ie Brief Description The rule-based paradigm used in the building of many Knowledge-Based systems implies that rule-based systems are self-documenting and facilitate the addition of knowledge to the knowledge-base in an ad-hoc manner (the No-Function-in-Structure principle).Several first generation Knowledge-Based systems built using this paradigm are being rebuilt because the maintenance experience has shown that the paradigm is invalid .. The maintenance of these systems became increasingly difficult to the point that an expensive re-construction effort was seen as the only solution to the burgeoning maintenance problem.Analysis of the maintenance problem indicates that it falls in that class of problems usually associated with information systems constructed with little, if any, application of software engineering. Recent research has indicated that software engineering has a major part to play in the design and construction of Knowledge-Based systems, and that similar benefits gained from applying software engineering to Information Systems would be applicable to the organization. The application of software engineering to Knowledge-Based systems facilitates the integration of Knowledge-Based Systems with conventional Information Systems and the systemUs maintainability.Research in this area should be directed to such issues as: how much of software engineering is applicable to Knowledge-Based Systems; what methodologies are needed; in what fashion does the application of software engineering facilitate the interfacing of knowledge acquisition to knowledge representation/processing; how are accepted knowledge acquisition strategies affected by the application of software engineering; how is knowledge representation affected by software engineering; etc.This workshop aims to bring together researchers involved with the software engineering of Knowledge-Based systems. It is aimed at people working with Knowledge-Based Systems having experience in: design methodologies ; maintenance; structured knowledge acquisition; knowledge representation; knowledge modelling. The workshop will run for two consecutive days, with the first day consisting of keynote presentations concluding with a panel session, open to the general public, and the second day consisting of a set of presentations and discussion, strictly limited to 20 people, on the basis of one author per accepted submission over the two days. Each submission will be refereed by the committee which will select the presentations for both days. It is intended to publish the proceedings with each attendee on the second day receiving a pre-published copy.Interested researchers are invited to submit four copies of an extended abstract of no more than two A4 pages. Paper copies only will be accepted.Late submissions will be returned unopened Schedule Closing date for abstracts 15 May 91 Notify acceptance of submission 1 June 91 Firm deadlines: -workshop proceedings in final form to arrive in Sydney for copying by July 15 at the absolute latest. -workshop registration form and the $US65.00 fee from participants to be received by IJCAI no later than July 15 Preliminary Agenda Day 1 - 24 August 1991 1000 - 1630 five one hour keynote presentations by prominent researchers in this field 1630 panel session 1730 close Day 2 - 25 August 1991 0900 introduction Session 1 - Design Methodologies 0915 presentation & discussion 0945 presentation & discussion 1015 morning tea 1030 discussion Session 2 - Knowledge Acquisition 1100 presentation & discussion 1130 presentation & discussion 1200 lunch 1300 discussion Session 3 - Knowledge Representation 1330 presentation & discussion 1400 presentation & discussion 1430 afternoon tea 1445 discussion Session 4 - Maintenance 1515 presentation & discussion 1545 presentation & discussion 1615 discussion 1645 general discussion 1745 conclusions 1800 end workshop ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: David Powers <powers@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> Newsgroups: news.announce.conferences,comp.ai,comp.ai.neural-nets,comp.ai.nlang-know-rep,comp.cog-eng,sci.lang,sci.psychology Subject: IJCAI CFP: Natural Language Learning Date: 19 Mar 91 14:50:15 GMT Reply-To: "David Powers (AG Siekmann" <powers@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> CALL FOR PAPERS Natural Language Learning August 25 1991 - IJCAI Workshop - Sydney Machine Learning and Natural Language are two areas of Artificial Intelligence which not only overlap with each other, but with other significant areas of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. The focus of this workshop is computational language learning models. Primarily, we aim to bring together those who have implemented language learning models, or aspects thereof. However, we intend that computationally viable language learning theories developed by Linguists and Psycholinguists will also be examined at the workshop. In addition, Machine Learning or Natural Language research which has not specifically been undertaken from a language learning perspective may be considered relevant - in particular, for example, work in Concept Learning and Semantic Representation. Thus we wish to invite applications from all who have implemented language learning programs, and we will further encourage participation from those whose work could be of use in the implementation of language learning systems. A major goal will be the analysis of the various language learning models to allow comparison and contrasting of the theoretical perspective and hypotheses embodied, the implementation techniques and learning algorithms, and the implications of the virtues, failings and results of particular implementations and modelling experiments. Attendance will be by invitation, and the number of participants will be strictly limited, probably to 35. It will be necessary to charge a fee of $65 for each participant. Issues - ----- What technology and ideas can be imported into Natural Language Learning from other areas of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science? Which phenomena, hypotheses and theories have been modelled, tested or used in Natural Language Learning, and with what success? To what extent do results in Natural Language Learning suggest the need for a revision of Formal Language, Linguistic, Neural Network and Psycholinguistic theory and application? How broadly must we define Natural Language Learning - in particular, do we need to learn simultaneously interpretation of both the symbolic and grounded modalities? Possible Sessions - ------- -------- The issues above suggest that the workshop could be organized into sessions along the following lines: Psycholinguistic Models Learning Algorithms Complexity & Restriction Semantics & Representation The final program will of course reflect the distribution of the submissions received, and other issues may also be highlighted. Organizing Committee - --------- --------- David M. W. Powers powers@informatik.uni-kl.de (or davidp@mqcomp.mqcs.mq.oz.au) FB Informatik, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, 6750 Kaiserslautern FRG +49-631-205 -3449 (Tel), -3200 or -3210 (Fax), -3455 (Sec) Larry Reeker reeker@cs.ida.org Institute for Defence Analyses, 1801 N. Beauregard St, Alexandria VA 22311-1772 +1-703 -845-3577 (Tel), -820-9680 (Fax) Ephraim Nissan onomata@bengus.bitnet Dept of Computer Science, University of Wollongong, NSW Australia Submission Details - --------- ------- Prospective participants are encouraged to contact a member of the symposium committee to obtain a more detailed description of the symposium goals and issues. Participants should then submit an extended abstract of a paper (1000-2000 words) and/or a personal bio-history of work in the area (300-500 words) with a list of (up to 12) relevant publications. We will acknowledge your e-mail enquiries or submissions promptly, and will deal with other forms of communication as quickly as possible. Submissions should be sent by e-mail to powers=sub@informatik.uni-kl.de (and/or reeker@cs.ida.org) by May 15th. If e-mail is impossible, two copies should be sent to arrive by May 15th to: Larry Reeker, Institute for Defense Analyses, C & SE Div., 1801 N. Beauregard St, Alexandria, VA 22311-1772 OR, fax a copy (with cover page) by May 15th BOTH to 1-703-820-9680 (Larry Reeker, USA) AND to +49-631-205-3210 (David Powers, FRG). ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: Anand Rao <anand@aaii.oz.au> Date: Fri, 22 Mar 91 10:24:34 EST Subject: IJCAI CFP - Theoretical & Practical Design of Rational Agents Phone: (61) 3 663 7922 Call for Papers - -------------- IJCAI-91 WORKSHOP ON THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL DESIGN OF RATIONAL AGENTS Sunday, August 25, 1991 Workshop Description - ------------------- During the last few years, AI researchers have become increasingly concerned with the problem of designing architectures for intelligent systems that are required to operate in real-world environments. Based on the sensory input from their environment, these systems must be able to choose and execute appropriate courses of action to further their (or their designer's) goals. Moreover, this must be done under possibly stringent constraints on both time and information. There has emerged a range of approaches to the design of such systems. At one extreme are situated automata and related mechanisms, which incorporate compiled or ``hard-wired'' capabilities to perform their tasks. At the other extreme are situated planners or rational agents, which perform much of their reasoning and planning in real time as they interact with their environment. This workshop will focus on the rational-agency approach to the design of AI systems. Its purpose is to bring together researchers working on various aspects of rational agency and on the design of systems based on this approach. In the workshop, we will consider the philosophical foundations and logical formalizations of rational agency, the role of decision theory in deliberation and meta-level reasoning, and the design and performance evaluation of such rational agents in experimental and real-world domains. Topics of Interest - ----------------- Formalizations of Rational Agency -- logics of beliefs, desires, and intentions -- modelling quantitative aspects like probability, payoff, and utility -- theories of belief, desire, and intention revision Deliberation -- role of decision-theoretic techniques -- integration of decision-theoretic techniques with symbolic manipulation of intentions -- meta-level reasoning Design and Evaluation of Rational Agents -- architectural design of systems that incorporate one or more of the above -- real-world and experimental applications of rational agency -- evaluation criteria for rationality Organizing/Programme Committee - ------------------- Michael P. Georgeff (Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, Australia) Martha Pollack (SRI International, Menlo Park, USA) Stuart Russell (University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, USA) David Israel (SRI International, Menlo Park, USA) Anand Rao (Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute, Australia) Submission of Abstracts - ---------------------- Send Five (5) copies of an extended abstract (maximum 8 double-spaced pages) by May 1, 1991 to the following address. Please include the e-mail address of the main point of contact. Michael P. Georgeff Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute 1 Grattan Street Carlton, Victoria, 3053 Australia Tel: (+613) 663-7922 email: georgeff@aaii.oz.au Review of Papers - --------------- The extended abstracts will be reviewed for significance, originality, and relevance to the topic of the workshop. The workshop will be kept small -- about 30 participants. A small number of participants will be selected to present their work at the workshop. Accepted abstracts are due by July 15, 1991. They will be duplicated and distributed to all participants at the workshop. Acceptance of the abstracts does not preclude later submissions of derivative papers to conferences and journals. Important Dates - -------------- Date for Submission: May 1, 1991 Notification to Authors: June 15, 1991 Receipt of Revised Abstracts: July 15, 1991 Preliminary Agenda - ----------------- Session 1 (09:00 - 10:30): Foundations and Formalizations of Rational Agency Session 2 (11:00 - 12:30): Role of Decision-Theoretic Techniques Session 3 (14:00 - 15:30): Design and Evaluation of Rational Agents Session 4 (16:00 - 17:00): Panel Discussion: Future Directions ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: fass@cs.sfu.ca Date: 23 Mar 91 15:57 -0800 Subject: IJCAI CFP: computational approaches to non-literal language CALL FOR PAPERS IJCAI-91 WORKSHOP COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO NON-LITERAL LANGUAGE: METAPHOR, METONYMY, IDIOM, SPEECH ACTS, IMPLICATURE Dan Fass, James Martin, Elizabeth Hinkelman Sydney, Australia, 24th August 1991 1. Focus of the Workshop The purpose of the workshop is to stimulate exchange and discussion of theoretical issues and practical problems of artificial intelligence (AI) models of non-literal language. Non-literal language includes metaphor, idiom, "indirect" speech acts, implicature, hyperbole, metonymy, irony, simile, sarcasm, and other devices whose meaning cannot be obtained by direct composition of their constituent words. Non-literal language is increasingly acknowledged as pervasive in natural language and is important to subfields of natural language processing like machine translation and parsing ill-formed input. Non-literal language has also attracted interest from researchers in knowledge representation, planning and plan recognition, learning, belief modeling, and other subfields of AI. Researchers are invited to submit papers on topics including (but not limited to) the computer recognition, interpretation, acquisition, generation, and robust parsing of non-literal language. Issues of interest include: o the relationship of non-literal to literal language, o the adequacy of various forms of knowledge representation (symbolic vs connectionist vs statistical), o static vs dynamic mechanisms, o general vs idiosyncratic treatment of instances, o instances as novel vs conventional forms, o comparison and contrast of models of the various forms of non-literal language, o broader implications for AI. 2. Organizing Committee Dan Fass James Martin Centre for Systems Science, Computer Science Department and Simon Fraser University, Institute of Cognitive Science, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada. University of Colorado at Boulder, Tel: (604) 291-3208 Box 430, Boulder, CO 80309-0430, USA. Fax: (604) 291-4951 Tel: (303) 492-3552 E-mail: fass@cs.sfu.ca Fax: (303) 492-2844 E-mail: martin@boulder.colorado.edu Elizabeth Hinkelman Center for Information and Language Studies, University of Chicago, 1100 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Tel: (312) 702-8887 Fax: (312) 702-0775 E-mail: eliz@tira.uchicago.edu 3. Submission Details Authors should mail three (3) copies of a submission in hard copy form. Submissions should be no longer than 8 pages (excluding title page); have 1 inch margins on the top, sides and bottom; and use no smaller than 10 point type. The title page, separate from the body of the paper, should contain title, names of authors, their affiliation, address, phone, e-mail address, and an abstract of 100-200 words. Papers that do not conform to this format will not be reviewed. Send submissions to Dan Fass at his address, given above. Please do not send submissions to James Martin or Elizabeth Hinkelman. o Deadline for submissions Thu. May 2 o Notification of acceptance/rejection Fri. May 31 4. Workshop Details Attendance at the workshop will be limited to 30 participants. Only one invitation will be issued per accepted submission. To cover costs, it will be necessary to charge a fee of $US65 for each participant. Participants will be given further instructions on preparation of camera ready copy and session format when they receive notification of acceptance. Final papers will be collected into a set of proceedings and circulated to participants at the workshop. Arrangements (yet to be confirmed) are being made for a Special Edition of Computational Intelligence journal, edited by Fass, Martin and Hinkelman, in which selected papers from the workshop will appear. ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Subject: Cils Calendar X-Mailer: MH 6.6 #5[UCI] Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 09:58:07 -0600 >From: colleen@tira.uchicago.edu _________________ T H E C I L S C A L E N D A R ________________ The Center for Information and Language Studies Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 Subscription requests to: cils@tira.uchicago.edu ____________________________________________________________________ Vol. 1, No. 20 March 20, 1991 ~*~ Upcoming events: 3/25 14:30 Ry 276 Lecture Hans van Haleren, Univ. of Nijmegen - ------------------------------ MONDAY, MARCH 25 2:30 Lecture Ry 276 Hans van Halteren (cor_hvh@kunrc1.urc.kun.nl) Dept. of English, University of Nijmegen "The Linguistic DataBase (LDB)" The LDB is a database system developed by the TOSCA group at Nijmegen University which allows linguists who are not experts in computing to access syntactically analyzed corpora. The data in the database comprises `syntactic analysis trees' of the contiguous utterances in a natural-language text. Since these trees are built from a continuous text, they give a good representation of actual language use and can thus provide a testing ground for linguistic hypotheses. The range of extractable information in such a database is mainly dependent on the degree to which the text has been prepared. Formerly studies of corpora were restricted to the level of words or word-classes, but with the Linguistic DataBase it becomes possible to extend these studies to the level of syntax, so that larger constituents can be analyzed. Unlike currently available database packages, the LDB has been created specifically to handle the type of data linguists need to analyze - a labelled tree structure with a variable number of branches at each node and the possibility of recursion. The LDB can be used to examine the trees on the terminal screen, search for utterances with given properties, and handle database-wide queries about constructs in the utterances. The LDB does not presume special graphics hardware. For this reason it has been implemented for common machines (VAX and IBM PC/AT) and common terminals (VT100, ADM3, etc.). Where possible, special terminal features are used, such as highlighting and graphics characters, but even on the so- called `dumb' ADM3A the trees are represented by an acceptable imitation of graphics. Terminal types not already provided for can be easily installed by the user. The LDB also does not presume a computationally expert user. Thus control of the program is designed to be simple and clear. The overall control is handled by a menu system, which displays short descriptions of the choices, each of which can be activated by a single keystroke. In the Tree Viewer, which is used to examine an analysis tree on the terminal screen, there is not enough space left on the screen to produce these descriptions, so that commands (mostly of one keystroke) are listed in abbreviated form. A description of all commands can be accessed by a `help' command, however. For queries going beyond a single tree, the Exploration Scheme formalism has been developed. An Exploration Scheme consists of a search pattern, itself a tree much like the analysis trees, and a specification of the operations to be performed on the information the pattern discovers. The possibilities of Exploration Schemes are various. They range from a simple search for a tree, in order to examine it with the Tree Viewer, to the creation of frequency tables. The formalism is designed in such a way that the novice can start exploring immediately. From there, he can gradually expand his knowledge to the more complex features. In order to facilitate formulating Exploration Schemes the LDB has a special scheme editor. The LDB package comes with the Nijmegen Corpus, a 130,000 word collection of modern British English with a full syntactic analysis of each utterance. To each node in the tree (i.e. each constituent in the utterance) has been attached a function and a category label. In the future more corpora will become available. Furthermore, since the database system is independent of both formalism and language, it is possible to use it for any other kind of analyzed corpus. For more information contact Hans van Halteren, TOSCA Group, Department of English, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands. - -------------- End of CILS Calendar ------------------------------ End of NL-KR Digest *******************