nl-kr-request@CS.RPI.EDU (NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty) (01/24/91)
NL-KR Digest (Wed Jan 23 16:00:04 1991) Volume 8 No. 4 Today's Topics: Abstract for David Blair Talk Call for Workshop Proposals for 1991 ILPS Call for Papers: Workshop on Language and Information Processing electronic dictionaries Multimodal dialogue workshop (2nd Announcement) CILS Calendar CSLI Calendar, 24 January 1991, vol. 6:14 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 Subject: Abstract for David Blair Talk X-Mailer: MH 6.6 #5[UCI] Date: Wed, 23 Jan 91 13:50:07 -0600 >From: colleen@tira.uchicago.edu The CENTER FOR INFORMATION AND LANGUAGE STUDIES announces a lecture by DAVID BLAIR, Dept. of Business Administration, University of Michigan. Monday, Januay 28, at 2:30 in Ryerson 276. "Language and Representation in Information Retrieval" Commercial applications of information retrieval theory are undergoing rapid and significant changes. Large-scale document retrieval systems are becoming commonplace, and are increasingly being used to provide access to critical information. In addition, the intellectual context of these systems may be unique making it difficult to apply more traditional methods of document management. These pressures on information retrieval make it important to look at some of the foundational issues of information retrieval. This talk takes the view that information retrieval is fundamentally a problem of language, and that certain regularities in the way that language works have important consequences for the design of information retrieval systems. ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: kgm@munnari.oz.au (Kim Marriott) Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog,news.announce.conferences,sci.logic,comp.ai,comp.theory,comp.ai.nlang-know-rep Subject: Call for Workshop Proposals for 1991 ILPS Keywords: logic programming, NACLP. Date: 20 Jan 91 08:30:14 GMT Expires: 22 Mar 1991 Approved: denny@tss.com Workshop proposals are invited for the 1991 International Logic Programming Symposium (Formerly called "North American Conference on Logic Programming (NACLP)) to be held in San Diego, California, U.S.A., October 28--31, 1991. Workshops will be held after the conference in an informal atmosphere and participants will have the opportunity to meet and discuss issues with a selected focus. The format of workshop presentations will be determined by the organizers proposing the workshop but ample time should be allotted for general discussion. Workshops can range in length but most are intended to last a half or a full day. Proceedings of the workshops are not intended to be published, but will be made available to participants. Workshop proposals should contain: (1) A description of the workshop, identifying the particular issues it will focus on. (2) An indication as to why the workshop is topical and estimated number of attendees. (3) The names and addresses of the organizing committee. This should consist of 2 or 3 people. Proposals for workshops that bridge the gap between logic programming and neighboring fields, including artificial intelligence, logic, databases and theoretical computer science are especially welcome. Workshop proposals should be submitted no later than 22nd March and organizers will be notified by 8th April. Workshop organizers are responsible for: (1) Producing a "Call for Participation" in the workshop by 19th April. (2) Reviewing requests to participate in the workshop and scheduling workshop activities by 16th August. Please submit workshop proposals and inquiries to: Kim Marriott, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, U.S.A. Phone: (914) 784-7133 Fax: (914) 784-7455 Email: kimbal@ibm.com ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Date: Wed, 23 Jan 91 09:47:18 EST >From: mccray@nlm.nih.gov (Alexa T. McCray) Subject: Call for Papers: Workshop on Language and Information Processing CALL FOR PAPERS WORKSHOP ON LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION PROCESSING October 27, 1991 Washington, D.C. The American Society for Information Science (ASIS) invites sub- missions for a Language and Information Processing Workshop, to be held on October 27, 1991 at the ASIS '91 meeting in Washington, D.C. The theme of ASIS '91 is "Systems Understanding People, People Understanding Systems". The purpose of the workshop is to bring together researchers who are concerned with the potentially significant role of sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) in intelligent information retrieval (IR). The workshop will focus on the progress that has been made to date on the application of NLP methods to the IR problem and will provide a forum for discussing some promising areas for future research. Submitted papers must reflect substantive work done at the intersection of NLP and IR. Papers should emphasize completed work rather than future plans. PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Alexa T. McCray, National Library of Medicine Elizabeth Liddy, Syracuse University Carl Weir, Unisys David Lewis, University of Massachusetts FORMAT FOR SUBMISSIONS: Submit 5 copies of a draft paper, not exceeding 10 single-spaced pages (exclusive of references) to arrive no later than May 31, 1991. A cover page should include the title, full names of all authors, the address of the primary author, including an e-mail address if possible, and a short abstract. Send submissions to the workshop chair: Alexa T. McCray National Library of Medicine Bldg. 38A/9N905, Mail Stop 54 Bethesda, Md. 20894 Phone: (301) 496-9300 Internet: mccray@nlm.nih.gov SCHEDULE: Submissions should be sent to arrive by May 31, 1991. Notification of acceptance will be made by July 15, 1991. Camera-ready papers will be due on September 16, 1991. Workshop will be held on October 27, 1991. WORKSHOP INFORMATION: The workshop will be held in conjunction with the 54th annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science (October 27-31, 1991). A full proceedings of the workshop will be made available to those attend. The workshop will be open to all interested researchers, but presentations will be limited to accepted papers. There will be a $30.00 workshop registration fee which will be used to cover the cost of preparing the proceedings and providing refreshments. Lunch will not be provided. ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Subject: electronic dictionaries Date: Tue, 22 Jan 91 15:49:23 PST >From: diana@hplnlhub.hpl.hp.com I am looking for any sort of information on on-line dictionaries and other kinds of dictionary technology (including hand-held specialty calculator-type thesauruses and spelling checkers), morphological analyzers, word lists, and any related . I'd like to receive information about products that are available either commercially or through research channels, papers about problems encountered in building an on-line dictionary, and musings about what word lists and dictionaries can be used for. Could someone out there help me out? I'd be glad to send summaries to people who request a summary. Diana C. Roberts Hewlett-Packard Laboratories ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu >From: mmt@client2.DRETOR (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.ai.nlang-know-rep,comp.groupware,comp.infosystems,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology Subject: Multimodal dialogue workshop (2nd Announcement) Keywords: HCI communication dialogue workshop Date: 21 Dec 90 14:41:49 GMT WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT THE STRUCTURE OF MULTIMODAL DIALOGUE Second Invitational VENACO WORKSHOP and ESCA TUTORIAL and RESEARCH WORKSHOP (ETRW) on Italy or Southern France, Sept 16-20, 1991 Organized by The Venaco Workshops committee, and The European Speech Communication Association Nature of the workshop This is the second announcement and call for nominees to an international interdisciplinary research workshop and ETRW on the Structure of Multimodal Dialogues, to be held in Italy or Southern France, September 16-20, 1991. The workshop is a five-year follow-up of one held in Venaco, Corsica, in September 1986, the results of which were published in the book "The Structure of Multimodal Dialogue" (Eds., Taylor, Neel, and Bouwhuis, Elsevier North-Holland, 1989). About 40 nominees will be invited to participate, of whom 20-25 will be asked to present "provocation papers". They, and perhaps others, will be requested to provide chapters for the book that will be derived from the workshop. The primary objective of the workshop will be to advance our understanding of human-computer (and human-human) interaction that uses multiple modalities of communication. The first part of the workshop will form a European Speech Communication Association Tutorial and Research Worskshop (ETRW). The workshop should be of interest to psychologists studying human interaction as well as to those concerned with human-computer interaction. Structure of the Workshop The Second Venaco Workshop and ETRW on the Structure of Multimodal Dialogue will be held immediately before the 2nd European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech'91) which will take place in Genova, Italy 24-26 September 1991. A book will be derived from the workshop presentations and discussions. This will not be a "Proceedings" volume in the ordinary sense, in that authors will be encouraged to revise and coordinate their presentations for publication in light of events at the workshop. It is intended that an editorial panel will work the presentations, together with chapters based on the discussions, into a unified book, as was done for the first Venaco Workshop. The workshop will be structured around four Themes (yet to be decided). Suggestions for appropriate Themes are hereby solicited. Each Theme will feature a set of five or six papers intended to provoke discussion rather than to present research. These provocation papers will be presented on four afternoons, with the discussion on the following morning. The discussions will be taped so that they may provide the basis for chapters in the resulting book. The format of the workshop is thus: Monday morning: Tutorial on Dialogue structure afternoon: Paper presentations on Theme 1 (Speech-related) Tuesday morning: discussion on Theme 1 afternoon: Paper presentations on Theme 2 (Speech-Related) Wednesday morning: discussion on Theme 2 (End of segment on primarily speech-related dialogue) afternoon: Paper presentations on Theme 3 (General multimodal) Thursday morning: discussion on Theme 3 afternoon: Paper presentations on Theme 4 (General multimodal) Friday morning: discussion on Theme 4 afternoon: General Discussion on the Structure of Multimodal Dialogue Themes 1 and 2 will be based around Speech Communication (human-human and human-machine communication, whether speech is the only communication mode or is used in combination with other modes). The agenda will focus on those themes during the first three days, thus allowing attendees interested only in speech to attend only part of the total workshop. The other two Themes (3 and 4) will mainly concern other modes of communication and multimodal dialogues that may or may not have vocal components. Attendance at the workshop Participation in the full workshop will be limited to about 40 invited persons. For the ETRW (the speech-related first half), a few other attendees will be accepted as observers who may contribute by presenting their research in poster sessions. If any participants wish to demonstrate interaction techniques that illustrate some aspect of the problem of multimodal dialogue, such demonstrations might be incorporated as Theme provocation papers, or included with poster sessions, or presented during the evening appropriate to the Theme they illustrate. Demonstrations intended simply to present work accomplished, rather than to illustrate a Theme, are not encouraged. Participants wishing to present demonstrations must arrange for their own supporting hardware and software. The registration fee will be small (about Ecus 160 (US$220 (according to the rate of mid-November 1990), ESCA members will have a 40 Ecus reduction), whether attendance is for the full workshop or for only the speech-related first half, and will be the same for invited participants as for observers. Some financial assistance may be available to invited participants who would otherwise be unable to attend. Nominations to the Workshop This announcement solicits nomination of potential attendees and observers. At the first Venaco workshop, many different disciplines from social psychology to hard AI were represented, and many of the attendees were hardly aware that some of the disciplines of other attendees existed. We hope that an even wider range of disciplines will be represented in 1991, and that as much cross-fertilization across disciplines will occur. Nominations are solicited especially from those concerned with the development of dialogue skills, whether in children or in novice users of computers. It is unreasonable to suppose that the organizers are aware of more than a small fraction of people who might be valuable contributors and who would find attendance valuable. Accordingly, we solicit responses not only from people who might wish an invitation, but also from people who might know someone who might like to be invited. In nominating yourself or someone else, please provide a BRIEF introduction to the nominee's interest and competence in the area of multimodal interaction, and if appropriate, suggest a Theme for which the nominee would be particularly suited. Responses may be sent, preferably by e-mail, before the 31th of January 1991, to: Dr. M. M. Taylor DCIEM Box 2000, North York Ontario, Canada M3M 3B9 (phone) +1 416 635-2048(fax) +1 416, 635-2104 (e-mail) mmt@ben.dciem.dnd.ca, or Mme F. Neel (that's an acute accent on the first e) LIMSI-CNRS BP-133 91403 ORSAY Cedex France (phone) +33 1 69 85 80 64 (fax) +33 1 69 85 80 88 (e-mail) neel@frlim51.bitnet (EARN), neel@limsi.fr (FNET) or Dr. D. G. Bouwhuis IPO PO Box 513 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands (phone) +31 40 41 57 40 (fax) +31 40 75 88 85 (e-mail) bouwhuis@HEIIPO5.bitnet I am sending you also a copy by fax Francoise - - Martin Taylor (mmt@ben.dciem.dnd.ca ...!uunet!dciem!mmt) (416) 635-2048 There is no legal canon prohibiting the application of common sense (Judge James Fontana, July 1990, on staying the prosecution of a case) ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Subject: CILS Calendar X-Mailer: MH 6.6 #5[UCI] Date: Mon, 21 Jan 91 17:05:35 -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. 12 January 21, 1991 ~*~ Upcoming events: 1/21 14:30 Ry 276 Lecture Abraham Bookstein, CILS 1/23 16:00 Wb 408 Workshop Paula C. Schiller 1/25 13:00 Psy G110 Workshop Ronald McClamrock, Philosophy 1/28 14:30 Ry 276 Lecture David Blair, Univ. of Michigan 1/28 15:30 Wb 130 Workshop James D. McCawley, Linguistics - ------------------------------ MONDAY, JANUARY 21 2:30 pm. Lecture Ry 276 Abraham Bookstein, CILS (bkst@tira) "Modelling Bitmap Sets for Data Compression" Abstract Recent approaches to data compression emphasize the distinction between data modelling to determine probabilities of message occurrence, and the use of these probabilities to encode the data. Most such efforts involve a single stream of messages. However, bitmaps often occur in sets in which pairs of bitmaps are related to one another. In this talk I shall review the use of bitmaps in information retrieval and describe three models that exploit relations between bitmaps that might be useful for estimating probabilities of bit occurrence. I shall also indicate how such information can be used as part of a practical compression technique. ____________________________________ WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23 4:00 p.m. Workshop Wb 408 Language and Thought Paula C. Schiller "Frontiers of Description" ____________________________________ FRIDAY, JANUARY 25 1:00 p.m. Workshop Psy G110 Speech Science Ronald McClamrock, Dept. of Philosophy "Levels of Explanation" For further information, please contact Howard Nusbaum, Department of Psychology, Beecher 408, 702-6468, hcn1@midway. ____________________________________ MONDAY, JANUARY 28 2:30 Guest Lecture Ry 276 David Blair, Dept. of Business Administration University of Michigan Professor Blair will speak on the topic of "Language and Representation in Information Retrieval." An abstract will follow later this week. ******* *3:30 p.m. Workshop Wb 130 The Pragmatics of Language James D. McCawley, Depts. of Linguistics and East Asian Languages and Civilizations *Please note special time. Readings will be available in the Departments of Philosophy and Linguistics, and in the CILS office. For more information, please contact Jerrold Sadock, Dept. of Linguistics (2-8524) or Josef Stern, Dept. of Philosophy (2-8594). ____________________________________ POSITION AVAILABLE The CENTER FOR INFORMATION AND LANGUAGE STUDIES has a position available for a RESEARCH ASSOCIATE in COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS. The Center is an interdisciplinary unit created to conduct research on the organization and analysis of textual and natural language information in a computerized environment. The current staff includes Research Associates in language-oriented information retrieval -- including retrieval software systems and architecture, database organization, and analytic retrieval techniques -- and others interested in natural language parsing, pragmatics, and artificial intelligence. The Center works with associated faculty in the Departments of Computer Science, Linguisitics, and Psychology, and sponsors Graduate Assistantships with these Departments. The Center has an opening at the postdoctoral level for a Research Associate in Computational Linguistics with an interest in natural language processing. This is a research oriented position, with some application development and teaching activities. Current Center interests include morphological and syntactic parsing of French, English and Japanese. The candidate will also work with the Natural Language Software Registry housed at the Center. The position of Research Associate is a one-year appointment with the possibility of reappointment for a second year. The Center has state of the art computing equipment, with research centered around a network of Sun workstations connected to the University ethernet. There is a high speed datalink to the supercomputer center in Urbana. The University is the depository of the ARTFL French language database of 2000 works and 750 megabytes of text; this, as well as a number of other large full-text databases, is available for research purposes through the University Network. Please send a curriculum vitae, a list of publications, and a 750-word one- to two-year research project proposal by electronic or surface mail to: Assistant Director Center for Information and Language Studies University of Chicago JRL S-107 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, IL 60637 mark@gide.uchicago.edu ------------------------------ To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu Date: Wed, 23 Jan 91 11:14:32 PST >From: ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU (Ingrid Deiwiks) Subject: CSLI Calendar, 24 January 1991, vol. 6:14 C S L I C A L E N D A R O F P U B L I C E V E N T S _____________________________________________________________________________ 24 January 1991 Stanford Vol. 6, No. 14 _____________________________________________________________________________ A weekly publication of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4115 ____________ CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR THURSDAY, 24 JANUARY 1991 2:15 p.m. CSLI SEMINAR Cordura 100 Phenomenology for Cognitive Scientists Izchak Miller Visiting Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Stanford University (miller@csli.stanford.edu) Abstract in last week's Calendar CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR THURSDAY, 31 JANUARY 1991 2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar Cordura 100 Phenomenology for Cognitive Scientists Izchak Miller Visiting Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Stanford University (miller@csli.stanford.edu) No abstract available ____________ SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM Interpretation as Abduction Jerry Hobbs SRI International (hobbs@ai.sri.com) Thursday, 24 January, 4:15 p.m. Building 60, Room 61G We understand discourse so well because we know so much. Therefore, a theory of discourse interpretation must be a theory of how knowledge is used in the interpretation of discourse. Recently, a number of researchers have begun to view the processes of discourse interpretation as a variety of abductive inference. Abduction is inference to the best explanation. In the TACITUS project at SRI, we have developed an approach to abductive inference, called "weighted abduction," that has resulted in a significant simplification of how the problem of interpreting texts is conceptualized. The interpretation of a text is taken to be the minimal explanation of why the text would be true. More precisely, to interpret a text, one must prove the logical form of the text from what is already mutually known, allowing for coercions, merging redundancies where possible, and making assumptions where necessary. Such "local pragmatics" problems as reference resolution, the interpretation of compound nominals, the resolution of syntactic ambiguity and metonymy, and schema recognition simply "fall out" if interpretation is approached in this manner. Moreover, this approach of "interpretation as abduction" can be combined with the older view of "parsing as deduction" to produce an elegant and thorough integration of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Next week: Representations and Representational Theory of the Mind, Fred Dretske, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University. ____________ PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM Neurath's Naturalistic Theory of Scientific Evidence Statements Thomas U"bel Northwestern University Friday, 25 January, 3:15 p.m. Building 90, Room 91A No abstract available. ____________ LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM The Diachronic Syntax of Hittite Possessive Pronouns Andrew Garrett University of Texas Friday, 25 January, 3:30 p.m. Cordura 100 Hittite, an Indo-European language attested from central Anatolia in the second millennium BCE, has clitic possessive pronouns positioned by Wackernagel's Law (WL) after their sentences' first phonological word, as well as morphologically distinct clitic possessive pronouns bound to their head noun. The WL type is more characteristic of the later language, especially Neo-Hittite, while the NP-internal type is especially characteristic of Old Hittite; both are also found in Hittite's oldest Anatolian and non-Anatolian IE relatives. This paper will elucidate the syntactic evolution of these clitic types in Hittite, with special attention to the interaction between the two pronominalization strategies and both the Hittite possessor raising system and the syntax of WL in Anatolian. The approach is primarily descriptive and diachronic, but the results will argue, on the one hand, against the reconstruction of possessor raising and WL-possessive pronominalization in Proto-Indo-European and, on the other hand, against the general view that WL is a nonsyntactic prosodic or phonological process. ____________ SPECIAL TALK Can We Unify the Meanings of Probability? Glenn Shafer University of Kansas Monday, 28 January, 11:00 a.m. Ventura 17 No abstract available. ____________ SYNTAX WORKSHOP On Syntactic Reconstruction in Ellipsis Mary Dalrymple Xerox PARC (dalrymple@parc.xerox.com) Tuesday, 29 January, 7:30 p.m. Cordura 100 (postponed from an earlier date) Analyses of elliptical constructions fall into one of two general types. According to the first type of analysis, syntactic structure is present in the elided portion of a sentence containing ellipsis at some level or stage of derivation. For example, the analysis of Sag (1976) involves deletion of syntactic material in the ellipsis site; more recent analyses within the Government-Binding framework involve reconstruction of syntactic material within the ellipsis site. According to the second type of analysis, the interpretation for a sentence containing ellipsis is obtained by means of a semantic operation in which no syntactic reconstruction or deletion is involved. On the analysis of Dalrymple, Shieber, and Pereira (to appear), for example, the interpretation of elided material is provided by means of solving a semantic equality. Certain phenomena seem to indicate that the first approach is correct; these phenomena involve relations that are usually taken to be syntactic, such as anaphoric and filler-gap dependencies, but which hold even in sentences containing ellipsis. I will examine the evidence for syntactic reconstruction in ellipsis and show that an analysis based on syntactic reconstruction or deletion makes incorrect predictions in many cases. I will also discuss a possible alternative explanation for the data that seem to support a syntactic reconstruction analysis. ____________ PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM Images of Thinking in the Brain Alan Gevins EEG Systems Laboratory Wednesday, 30 January, 3:45 p.m. Building 420, Room 050 No abstract available. ____________ ------------------------------ End of NL-KR Digest *******************