[comp.ai.nlang-know-rep] NL-KR Digest Volume 6 No. 6

nl-kr-request@cs.rpi.edu (NL-KR Moderator Chris Welty) (03/07/89)

NL-KR Digest             (3/06/89 21:01:13)            Volume 6 Number 6

Today's Topics:

	Administrivia: More excuses
	SUNY Buffalo Particularism Conference
	Niagara Linguistics Society
	CSLI Calendar
	ALLC-ICCH89 Conference Summary
	BBN AI Seminar -- Michael Jordan
	
Submissions: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu OR nl-kr@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Requests, policy: nl-kr-request@cs.rpi.edu OR
                  nl-kr-request@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Back Issues: Anon FTP to archive.cs.rpi.edu [128.213.1.10], 
             nl-kr/Vxx/Nyy (ie nl-kr/V06/N01 for V6#1)

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

Date: Mon, 6 Mar 89 22:00:34 EST
>From: weltyc@cs.rpi.edu (Christopher A. Welty)
To: nl-kr@cs.rpi.edu
Subject: More excuses

Well, well.  For some odd reason V6#1 went out and there wasn't a single
error, but the past weeks I have been spending endless hours sorting out 
the inevitable nonsense that various mailers spew out.  There are still
about 50 or so people who didn't get the last two issues (#4 and #5) 
because the messages are STILL queued and trying to make connections.
In an effort to combat this, I have taken many devious actions, one of
which will be to make digests a little smaller....Even though the messages 
are getting ever larger.  

Anyway for all the reasons, this digest is late, I seem to be running about 
a week behind schedule, please keep this in mind when you post a conference 
or other annoucement...

Also, this issue will probably also suffer from the same `>From ' problem the
previous ones did, I have yet to figure out how to get my mailer not to
do that...

=====
Christopher Welty  ---  Asst. Director, RPI CS Labs | "Porsche:  Fahren in
weltyc@cs.rpi.edu             ...!njin!nyser!weltyc |  seiner schoentsen Form"

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

Date: Wed, 22 Feb 89 12:04:44 EST
>From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport)
To: james@cs.rochester.edu, joel@cs.rochester.edu, nl-kr@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Subject: SUNY Buffalo Particularism Conference


                        PARTICULARISM CONFERENCE

                            March 2-5, 1989
                             280 Park Hall

                              SUNY Buffalo

The purpose of this conference is to bring together a group of  scholars
in  various disciplines who practice an approach which may be defined as
particularist, in order to consider  is  implications  for  contemporary
thought.

"Particularism" characterizes a  rapidly  developing  area  of  research
strategies  in  which  emphasis  falls  on  observations and experiences
rather than on systems and generalizations.  In literary  sutdies,  this
has  taken  form  as an expressly anti-theoretical movement; concern has
shifted towards the immediate experience of a work and the uniqueness or
_quidditas_ of the aesthetic event.

Particularist emphasis can also be seen in the  biological  and  medical
sciences.   Reading  Oliver  Sacks,  one  realizes  that some physicians
regard the individual case as being in some degree inaccessible  to  any
general  diagnosis.   In  zoology,  Stephen Jay Gould has argued for the
importance of variety and exception in the survival of species.

Mathematics is concerned with discontinutities and singularities.

In social science, the "Annales" shcool, the Princeton school,  and  the
New  Historicists  have  establishede  a  powerful  tradition  in micro-
history.  Clifford Geertz has done the same for anthropology.

In ethics, a borad plea for the priority of the particular case over the
general principle has been entered by thinkers as various as Lyotard and
Bernard Williams.

Speakers:

Naomi Schor (Romance Languages, Brown)
David Hull (Philosophy of Science, Northwestern)
Lawrence B. McCullough (Baylor College of Medicine)
Paul Fry (English, Yale)
Roland Kany (Tuebingen)
Martha Nussbaum (Philosophy, Brown)
Lawrence Blum (Philosophy, UMass/Boston)
Rene Thom (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques)

For further information, contact Irving Massey, Dept. of  English,  SUNY
Buffalo, 716-636-2575, 882-7652

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

Date: Thu, 2 Mar 89 12:52:49 EST
>From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport)
To: ai-cgs@cs.Buffalo.EDU, nl-kr@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Subject: Niagara Linguistics Society


                      NIAGARA LINGUISTICS SOCIETY

                       Working Papers Colloquium

                          BEYOND THE SENTENCE

                         Friday, 14 April 1989
                             3:00 - 6:00 pm
                  684 Baldy, SUNY Buffalo Amherst Campus

                           Featured Speaker:

                               ALLAN KORN
                    Buffalo State University College

                              "Listening"

                            Other Speakers:

           AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH TO KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

                           Mahamane Abdoulaye
                              SUNY Buffalo
                       "Being a Horseracing Fan"

                       Caroline Flury-Kashmanian
                              SUNY Buffalo
                            "Being a Bookie"

                              Renee Klotz
                              SUNY Buffalo
                     "Working in a Large Bookstore"

                             Monica Madera
                              SUNY Buffalo
                              "Meditating"

                            Lynette Spencer
                              SUNY Buffalo
                        "Being a Hard Scientist"

                            CALL FOR PAPERS

If you are interested in submitting a paper for this colloquium, contact
Zan Robinson, 716-854-6293, by 1 April 1989.

                      Refreshments will be served.

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

Date: Thu, 2 Mar 89 13:43:21 PST
>From: emma@csli.Stanford.EDU (Emma Pease)
To: friends@csli.Stanford.EDU
Subject: CSLI Calendar 2 March, 4:18


       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
_____________________________________________________________________________
2 March 1989                     Stanford                      Vol. 4, No. 18
_____________________________________________________________________________

     A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
     Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
			      ____________
			 SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
      A Computational Psychology Approach to Commonsense Perception
			     Jeffry Shrager
			  Friday, 3 March, 3:15
			       Room 60:61N

   Commonsense Perception is a generalized version of what Dretske has
   called "epistemic seeing"---that is, knowledge-based interpretation of
   (perceptual) experience.  In this talk I will outline a psychological
   approach to the study of commonsense perception in incremental concept
   learning.  My goal is a computational framework and model whose basic
   processing cycle is knowledge revision by commonsense perception, and
   which subsumes rule-based inference, perceptual reasoning, and most
   inductive and instructed learning tasks.
			      ____________
		    LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
		Language Acquisition: "A Creolist's View"
			   Lawrence Carrington
	       University of the West Indies and Stanford
			  Friday, 3 March, 3:15
			 Cordura Conference Room
			      ____________
			      CSLI SEMINAR
		 Indexicality and Quantified Modal Logic
			      Harry Deutsch
			Illinois State University
			 Tuesday, 7 March, 4:00
			 Cordura Conference Room

   Relations between recent philosophy of language and the semantics of
   modality (possible worlds semantics) have not been good.  I attempt to
   mediate the dispute by formulating quantified modal logic (QML) so as
   to incorporate some insights of the "new theory of reference" (NTR).
   This sheds some new light on both QML and the NTR.

			      ____________
			 SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
			 Ontology and Computers
			      Ruben Kleiman
		     Apple Intelligent Agents Group
			  Friday, 10 March, 3:15
			       Room 60:61N

   This talk will be about artificial intelligence and knowledge
   representation, focusing on how to encode knowledge into a computer.
   On one hand, Winograd, Flores, and Putnam have advocated a
   phenomenological view that abandons the standard mentalist position.
   On the other hand, there are also many people (Hayes, McCarthy,
   Dennett, and most AI workers) who keep the mentalist position.  Dr.
   Kleiman will attempt to reconcile these two philosophical positions.
			      ____________
		    LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
		 A Union Analysis of Noun Incorporation
		      Donna Gerdts, SUNY at Buffalo
			  Friday, 10 March, 3:15
			 Cordura Conference Room
  
			      ____________

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

Date:         Thu, 23 Feb 89 22:49:15 EST
>From: Ian Lancashire <IAN%vm.epas.utoronto.ca@CORNELLC.ccs.cornell.edu>
Subject:      ALLC-ICCH89 Conference Summary
To: nl-kr@rochester.arpa

                          The Dynamic Text:
                    ALLC/ICCH Toronto Conference

                     Tools for Humanists, 1989:
               a fair of notable software and hardware
                          June 6--10, 1989

        Toronto-Oxford Summer School in Humanities Computing
                        May 29--June 16, 1989

    _________________________________________________________________


                    TABLE OF CONTENTS

Search for >1, >2, etc.

       >1  Sponsors
       >2  The Conference
       >3  The Fair
       >4  The Toronto-Oxford Summer School
       >5  Registration
       >6  Accommodation
       >7  Centre for Computing in the Humanities
       >8  Advance Conference Schedule
       >9  Summer School Course Schedule
       >10 Summer School Faculty
       >11 ACH & ALLC Application Forms

    _________________________________________________________________

[The 99K text of Ian's Summary is too large for Digest distribution, 
 so I sold the movie rights to MGM.   It is also available from 
 archive.cs.rpi.edu in the file  nl-kr/other/allc-icch89, or you
 may mail to nl-kr-request.  Since most people don't know what ACH & 
 ALLC are, I did include a short summary --- CW]


>11  ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES


  What is ACH?

  Founded in 1977, the Association for Computers and the Humanities
  is an international organization devoted to encouraging the
  development and use of computing techniques in humanities research
  and education. ACH fosters computer-assisted research in
  literature and language, history, philosophy, anthropology,
  art, music, dance, computational linguistics, and cognitive
  science.


  What the ACH Offers

  ACH membership includes a subscription to its quarterly newsletter
  as well as the scholarly journal Computers and the Humanities. ACH
  sponsors the bi-annual International Conference on Computers and the
  Humanities (ICCH) and a bi-annual conference on Teaching Computers
  and the Humanities, as well as sessions at the annual meetings of the
  Modern Language Association and the National Educational Computing
  Conference.


            ACH MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION

  Name: __________________________________________________

  Address: _______________________________________________

           _______________________________________________

           _______________________________________________

  Network and Address: ___________________________________

  Area(s) of interest: ___________________________________

                       ___________________________________


  ACH MEMBERSHIP
   _
  |_|  $55.00 per year individual
       Includes subscription to ACH Newsletter (4 issues per year)
       and to Computers and the Humanities (6 issues per year).
       All issues of both publications for the current year
       will be sent.


   OPTIONAL FEES
   _
  |_|          NORTHEAST (REGIONAL) ACH MEMBERSHIP
       $10.00  per year for ACH members
   _
  |_|          SUBSCRIPTION TO  RESEARCH IN WORD PROCESSING NEWSLETTER
       $12.00 for 9 issues
   _
  |_|          SUBSCRIPTION TO {\it BITS \& BYTES REVIEW
       $40.00 for 9 issues


  Send application form and fee to:

            Joseph Rudman, Treasurer
            Association for Computers and the Humanities
            Department of English
            Carnegie-Mellon University
            Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

            E-mail: RUDMAN @ CMPHYS


  _________________________________________________________________



   ASSOCIATION FOR LITERARY AND LINGUISTIC COMPUTING (ALLC)

  What is the ALLC?

  The Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) is an
  international association which brings together all who have an
  interest in using computers in the analysis of text. The ALLC was
  founded in 1973 and its members are drawn from subjects such as
  literature, linguistics, lexicography, psychology, history, law
  and computer science.

  What the ALLC Offers

  The ALLC offers conferences, courses, representatives for subject
  and geographical areas and a major journal, Literary and Linguistic
  Computing, published by Oxford University Press, which all members
  receive. ALLC Members are also entitled to reduced rates at
  ALLC-sponsored gatherings.

  Representatives

  The ALLC has representatives in over thirty countries throughout the
  world. Recognised experts advise on over twenty-five subject areas
  including Machine Translation, Computer-Assisted Learning, Software,
  Lexicography, Structured Databases, Literary Statistics, Textual
  Editing besides language-oriented groups for texts in many different
  languages.

  Conferences

  Recent ALLC conferences have been held at Pisa (1982), San
  Francisco (1983), Louvain-la-Neuve (1984), Nice (1985), Norwich
  (1986), Gothenburg (1987) and Jerusalem (1988).

  Officers

  President:             Professor Antonio Zampolli
  Chairman:              Mrs Susan Hockey
  Honorary Secretary:    Dr Tom Corns
  Honorary Treasurer:    Mr John Roper

  Literary and Linguistic Computing

  In 1986 the ALLC's own publications, the ALLC Bulletin (1973-1985)
  and the ALLC Journal (1980-1985) were merged to form a major new
  journal published by Oxford University Press. Literary and
  Linguistic Computing is published four times per year and appeals to
  all who have an interest in computer usage and the humanities.
  The Editor-in-Chief is Mr Gordon Dixon, Institute of Advanced
  Studies, Manchester Polytechnic, Manchester, UK.


                  MEMBERSHIP OF THE ALLC
              IS BY PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION TO
             LITERARY AND LINGUISTIC COMPUTING


  1989 Rates: Individual 14 pounds UK, US $27 N. America, 16
  pounds elsewhere

  Subscription form  Please print
   _
  |_|   Please enter my subscription to Literary and Linguistic
        Computing 1989
   _
  |_|   Please send a sample copy
   _
  |_|   I enclose the correct remittance (payable to Oxford
        University Press)


  Name: __________________________________________________

  Address: _______________________________________________

           _______________________________________________

           _______________________________________________

  Country: _______________________________________________

  Please debit my Visa/Access/American Express/Diners Account*

  Card number: ___________________________________________

  Expiry date: ___________________ Signature: ____________

  If address registered with card company differs from above
  please give details (* delete as applicable)

  RETURN TO

  Journals Subscriptions       or        Journals Subscriptions
  Oxford University Press                Oxford University Press
  Walton Street                          200 Madison Avenue
  Oxford OX2 6DP                         New York NY 10016
  UK                                     USA

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

Date: Wed 1 Mar 89 17:26:13-EST
>From: Marc Vilain <MVILAIN@G.BBN.COM>
Subject: BBN AI Seminar -- Michael Jordan
To: ai-folks@G.BBN.COM

                    BBN Science Development Program
                       AI Seminar Series Lecture

       TOWARD A MODEL OF SPEECH ACQUISITION:  SUPERVISED LEARNING
               AND SYSTEMS WITH EXCESS DEGREES OF FREEDOM

                             Michael Jordan
                    MIT Center for Cognitive Science
                        (jordan@psyche.mit.edu)

                                BBN Labs
                           10 Moulton Street
                    2nd floor large conference room
                        10:30 am, Monday March 6


The acquisition of speech production is an interesting domain for 
the development of connectionist learning methods.  In this talk, 
I focus on a particular component of the speech learning problem, 
namely, that of finding an inverse of the function that relates 
articulatory events to perceptual events.  A problem for the learning 
of such an inverse is that the forward function is many-to-one and 
nonlinear.  That is, there are many possible target vectors corresponding 
to each perceptual input, but the average target is not in general a solution.  
I argue that this problem is best resolved if targets are specified
implicitly with sets of constraints, rather than as particular vectors 
(as in direct inverse system identification).  Two classes of constraints 
are distinguished---paradigmatic constraints, which implicitly specify 
inverse images in articulatory space, and syntagmatic constraints, which 
define relationships between outputs produced at different points in 
time.  (The latter include smoothness constraints on articulatory 
representations, and distinctiveness constraints on perceptual 
representations).  I discuss how the interactions between these 
classes of constraints may account for two kinds of variability in 
speech: coarticulation and historical change.

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