[comp.ai.nlang-know-rep] NL-KR Digest, Volume 7 No. 28

nl-kr-request@CS.RPI.EDU (NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty) (12/07/90)

NL-KR Digest      (Wed Dec  5 15:18:35 1990)      Volume 7 No. 28

Today's Topics:

	 UM92 - Call for Participation
	 Lexical and Knowledge Acquisition Talk Monday, Dec. 3
	 CILS Calendar
	 Syntax Workshop, 27 November, 7:30 p.m.

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To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
>From: "Winfried Graf" <graf@dfki.uni-sb.de>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 90 15:50:37 +0100
Subject: UM92 - Call for Participation

                   CALL FOR PARTICIPATION / CALL FOR PAPERS

                                    UM 92

                 3rd International Workshop on User Modeling

                             August 10-13, 1992 
   International Conference and Research Center for Computer Science (IBFI)
                          Dagstuhl Castle, Germany

The third International User Modeling Workshop, UM92, will be held from August
10 to August 13, 1992 at the International Conference and Research Center for
Computer Science (IBFI) at Dagstuhl Castle, Germany. Local arrangements will
be handled by Elisabeth Andre, Winfried Graf and Wolfgang Wahlster of the
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Saarbruecken site.
More information can be obtained from graf@dfki.uni-sb.de.

ORGANIZATION

The workshop will be organized to allow for:

(i)   Paper presentations, organized into sessions chaired by a commentator; 
      at the end of each session, the commentator will direct general
      discussion 
(ii)  Organized panel discussions
(iii) Parallel discussion groups on specific sub-topics, with all participants
      from the parallel groups later joining together for sharing of new 
      insights

PARTICIPATION

Because of the format combining paper presentations and discussion, the call
for participation is open to researchers who either have a paper to present
or some concrete ideas with respect to the open discussion portion of the
workshop. People who submit papers that do not get accepted for presentation
will still be considered as potential discussion participants. People who
attend to present a paper will automatically be assigned to one of the
organized parallel discussion groups, for participation. The best papers
will be published in the international journal 'User Modeling and User-
Adapted Information' after the workshop.

Attendance at the workshop is limited to 60 persons. All papers submitted
will be reviewed; accepted papers will be granted a small amount of time
for revision. The program committee is chaired by Robin Cohen, Bob Kass
and Cecile Paris, and will be composed of leading researchers in the field,
to be announced at a later date.

Participation in the workshop is by invitation only. Anyone who is interested
in attending the workshop must fill in the call for participation form and
submit it by  February 22, 1991(!) to:

	UM92; c/o Robin Cohen; Department of Computer Science;
	University of Waterloo; Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; N2L 3G1

Note that commentators will be given the papers for their session (about 
3-4 papers per session) in advance of the workshop, in order to prepare
directed discussion. Panels and panel topics, discussion group topics are
quite open - innovative, concrete suggestions are solicited. The discussion
portion of the workshop is intended to lead to a clarification of the aims
and directions of the field.

IMPORTANT DATES 

	February 22, 1991(!) - call for participation forms due
	February 1, 1992 - submitted papers due
	April 1, 1992 - notification of acceptance
	May 15, 1992 - final papers due

INFORMATION ON PAPER SUBMISSIONS

Send five (5) copies of an extended abstract by February 1, 1992 to:

	Bob Kass; EDS Center for Machine Intelligence;
	2001 Commonwealth Blvd; Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105, USA

The abstract should be 2500 words maximum (about 8 pages double spaced).
Clearly indicate the proposed advances to the field of user modeling, and 
include comparison with related work. Papers will be judged on originality,
clarity of presentation and significance to the field. Full papers will be
allowed up to 5000 words. Electronic submissions will not be accepted.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE NAMES AND ADDRESSES FOR REFERENCE

Robin Cohen; Department of Computer Science; University of Waterloo;
  Waterloo, Ontario, Canada  N2L 3G1
Bob Kass; EDS Center for Machine Intelligence; 2001 Commonwealth Blvd.;
  Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105, USA (kass@cmi.com)
Cecile Paris; USC/Information Sciences Institute; 4674 Admiralty Way;
  Marina del Rey, California 90292-6695, USA (paris@vaxa.isi.edu)

******************************************************************************

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION FORM

Name:
Address:
Phone:
E-mail:

I plan to submit a paper:  Yes_____  No_____
  If yes: supply a max. 350 word preliminary abstract (on a separate page);
  indicate general sub-area of user modeling:
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________

I am interested in serving as a commentator:   Yes___    No____
  If yes: provide position, rank, institution, brief biography,
  indicating sub-area(s) of interest within user modeling.
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________
I am interested in participating in a panel or subgroup discussion:
  Yes____  No____
  If yes: provide position, rank, institution, brief biography,
  indicating sub-area(s) of interest within user modeling.
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________

For panels, present a brief description of proposed panel, including
  title, scope and any panelists you already have in mind:
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________

- Are you willing to chair a panel?  Yes____  No____

- Which discussion group on  the preliminary list interests you? 
  _____________________________________________________________________

- Is there another discussion group topic you want to propose?
  If so, provide title, brief sketch:
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________
  _____________________________________________________________________

- Are you willing to chair a discussion group? Yes___  No____

User Modeling Sub-Areas:

1. Psychological foundations and cognitive modeling
2. Student modeling
3. Plan recognition
4. User modeling for natural language dialog
5. User modeling for natural language generation
6. Formal representations of user models (belief modeling)
7. Acquisition of user models
8. Explanation strategies with user modeling
9. Recognition and correction of misconceptions
10. Shell systems for user modeling
11. User modeling and the design of interfaces

Preliminary Discussion Groups List:

1. What is user modeling? - towards a definition
2. When is user modeling not necessary?
3. The advantages and disadvantages of stereotypes?
4. Does student modeling have different issues from user modeling?
5. Does user modeling require psychological modeling?
6. Does interface design differ from user modeling?
7. The practicality of user models -  ready for real systems or still far
   away?

------------------------------

To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Subject: Lexical and Knowledge Acquisition Talk Monday, Dec. 3
X-Mailer: MH 6.6 #5[UCI]
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 90 12:37:25 -0600
>From: colleen%tira@gargoyle.uchicago.edu

MONDAY, DECEMBER 3
11:00 a.m.
Ry 275

	     Lexical Acquisition and Knowledge Acquisition

			    Brian M. Slator
		   The Institute for the Learning Sciences
		        Northwestern University
			   Evanston, IL 60201

It is widely agreed that the "high-minded" tasks of AI require an extensive 
and elaborate collection of general, low-level, world-knowledge structures 
in place to begin with.  Meanwhile, there has recently been an increased 
emphasis on questions of "scale" in AI and Computational Linguistics.
The subject of this talk is in the intersection of these concerns: with 
developing procedures that will produce a knowledge base of lexical semantic 
structures from a machine-readable dictionary, with a view towards 
independently developing a knowledge-based (Preference Semantics) parsing 
system that operates over those structures.

Much of this research deals, either implicitly or explicitly, with an issue 
often referred to as "bootstrapping": applying a core of knowledge to the 
act of acquiring more knowledge. Bootstrapping works incrementally, at 
the word level in the short term, through the analysis of machine-readable 
dictionary entries, and later at the sentence and text level.

This talk describes a system for automatic lexical acquisition, and another 
system for parsing that uses these lexical structures.  The parsing produces 
knowledge structures intended to have a dual purpose: first, to be suitable 
for other knowledge-based programs to operate over and, second, to augment 
the knowledge base of the original system.  The hidden agenda is to attack 
the problem of automatic knowledge acquisition as a means of widening the 
"knowledge acquisition bottleneck."

------------------------------

To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Subject: CILS Calendar
X-Mailer: MH 6.6 #5[UCI]
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 90 08:31:19 -0600
>From: colleen%tira@gargoyle.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. 9 					    December 3, 1990

				   ~*~
Upcoming events:

12/3  11:00 Ry 275     Lecture        Brian Slator, Northwestern 
12/3  16:00 JRL S-126  Workshop       Stephen Neale, Berkeley
12/7  14:00 Psy G110   Workshop	      Susan Goldin-Meadow and
			              Howard C. Nusbaum, Psychology
12/7  15:00 Ry 276     Lecture        Scott Deerwester, CILS
- ------------------------------

				MONDAY, DECEMBER 3

11:00		Guest Lecture
 Ry 275		Brian Slator, Institute for Learning Sciences
		Northwestern University
		"Lexical Acquisition and Knowledge Acquisition"

				    Abstract

It is widely agreed that the "high-minded" tasks of AI require an extensive 
and elaborate collection of general, low-level, world-knowledge structures 
in place to begin with.  Meanwhile, there has recently been an increased 
emphasis on questions of "scale" in AI and Computational Linguistics.
The subject of this talk is in the intersection of these concerns: with 
developing procedures that will produce a knowledge base of lexical semantic 
structures from a machine-readable dictionary, with a view towards 
independently developing a knowledge-based (Preference Semantics) parsing 
system that operates over those structures.

Much of this research deals, either implicitly or explicitly, with an issue 
often referred to as "bootstrapping": applying a core of knowledge to the 
act of acquiring more knowledge. Bootstrapping works incrementally, at 
the word level in the short term, through the analysis of machine-readable 
dictionary entries, and later at the sentence and text level.

This talk describes a system for automatic lexical acquisition, and another 
system for parsing that uses these lexical structures.  The parsing produces 
knowledge structures intended to have a dual purpose: first, to be suitable 
for other knowledge-based programs to operate over and, second, to augment 
the knowledge base of the original system.  The hidden agenda is to attack 
the problem of automatic knowledge acquisition as a means of widening the 
"knowledge acquisition bottleneck."

				     *****	

4:00 p.m.	Workshop
 JRL S-126	The Pragmatics of Language
		Stephen Neale, Dept. of Philosophy, Berkeley
		"'AND' and '&' and "BUT'"
			
For more information, please contact Jerrold Sadock, Dept. of
Linguistics (2-8524) or Josef Stern, Dept. of Philosophy (2-8594).
- ---------------------------------

				FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7

2:00 p.m.	Workshop		
 Psy G110 	Speech Science
		Susan Goldin-Meadow and Howard C. Nusbaum
		Department of Psychology
		"Cognitive Issues and Concept Acquisition"
	
For further information, please contact Howard Nusbaum, Department of 
Psychology, Beecher 408, 702-6468, hcn1@midway.

				     *****

3:00 p.m.	Lecture
  Ry 276	Scott Deerwester, CILS
		"The TIRA Textual Object Management System"
			 
				    Abstract
 
Text, as represented in a computer, is a flat sequence of bytes.  It
is useful, however, to think of text as being composed of higher level
objects than bytes, and to be able to write computer programs that
operate on these objects, as well as on collections of objects.  The
purpose of the Textual Object Management System (TOMS) is to implement
an abstraction of text as a structure populated by such objects.  In
this talk I discuss the abstraction presented by the TOMS, from the
point of view of both a client and a textual database designer.
- -------------------------------

End of CILS Calendar

------------------------------

To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 90 09:26:26 PST
>From: ingrid@russell.Stanford.EDU (Ingrid Deiwiks)
Subject: Syntax Workshop, 27 November, 7:30 p.m.

			   SYNTAX WORKSHOP
     The Quasi-serial Verb Construction GO GET in Modern English
			  Geoffrey K. Pullum
  UC Santa Cruz/Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
		   Tuesday, 27 November, 7:30 p.m.
			     Cordura 100

The construction illustrated by "Go get your shoes" or "Come see my
new bike" has been discussed in a number of works that are oddly
isolated from each other and almost all incorrect in their claims
about the facts.  In this talk, I survey the properties of the
construction, distinguish it from an array of distinct constructions
that are sometimes confused with it (e.g., "Go and get your shoes" and
"Try and find your shoes"), and draw some theoretical conclusions.
The chief descriptive problem that the construction raises has to do
with its curious anti-inflection constraint and the location of that
constraint in the syntactic, morphological, or phonological domain.
The data relevant to this topic, however, reveal a very surprising
degree of inter-speaker variability that seems likely to thwart most
current attempts to derive the anti-inflection constraint from
theoretical principles.

------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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