nl-kr-request@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU (NL-KR Moderator Brad Miller) (07/28/88)
NL-KR Digest (7/27/88 20:03:00) Volume 5 Number 3 Today's Topics: wanted: GPSG parser FUG as an AI language. Poltergeist Small on-line dictionary (or English nouns & verbs) sought Chomsky awarded Kyoto Prize in basic sciences text-to-speech, text-to-phoneme, or text-to-syllable algorithms Implementing dictionaries Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 12 Jul 88 11:25 EDT From: COR_HVH%HNYKUN52.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: wanted: GPSG parser A colleague of mine, Vera Kamphuis, asked me to post the following request: ======================================================================== In a recently started teaching program at the Department of Language and Speech, University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, one of the courses deals with formal grammars. Different formalisms are presented to the students, and practical sessions serve to give them some experience in using these formalisms. One of the grammatical models discussed in this course is GPSG. However, the problem in last year's course was that no practical facilities were available, as a result of which students found it difficult to grasp the essence of the formalism. Our question is: Can anyone tell us whether a GPSG-parser(-generator) is available somewhere and if so, how we might be able to get our hands on it? As was said above, it serves only to give students the possibility to become acquainted with the practical use of the formalism, so it does not matter if it can only handle small-size grammars, for example. What is important is that it has workable speed. ====================================================================== Any information can be posted or sent to me at COR_HVH @ HNYKUN52 on BITNET. I will post a compilation of direct answers at the end of August or when the first one comes in (whatever's later). Thanks, Hans van Halteren ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Jul 88 14:54 EDT From: Jonas Mellin <mcvax!cs.exeter.ac.uk!jme@uunet.UU.NET> Subject: FUG as an AI language. I am a M.Sc student in computer science and I have started on my project. I have come to a choice in the project. I want to investigate FUG (Functional Unification Grammar) as a PROLOG like AI language. Has anybody investigated FUG as an AI language? Thanks, Jonas ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 88 18:16 EDT From: TALMAGE%VUVAXCOM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Poltergeist Poltergeist, as I recall, is a workstation-based tool for teaching foreign languages. The user types commands in some language, French, for example, and the Poltergeist inside the workstation rearranges the room pictured on the workstation accordingly. The user might say, "Turn the table upside down and put the vase upside down on one of the legs." Not long ago I read an article about this tool. I'd like to reread the article but can't find it in my library. It was in, I think, _Technological Horizons in Education Journal_. The people responsible for the article and the software are from MIT, I think. Can anyone point me to anything in print on this? Thanks. ______________________________________________________________________________ David W. Talmage / Villanova U / University Computing and Information Services UUCP: ...!vu-vlsi!excalibur!talmage Bitnet: talmage@vuvaxcom <best choice> Arpa-gate: talmage%vuvaxcom.bitnet@your-favorite-gateway ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 01:57 EDT From: ERIC Y.H. TSUI <munnari!aragorn.oz.au!eric@uunet.UU.NET> Subject: Small on-line dictionary (or English nouns & verbs) sought Would anyone has access to an electronic copy of English nouns and verbs ? A small (500 entries) to medium collection (5000 entries) would be appropriate. It would be ideal if the verbs (and/or nouns) are grouped into various categories. I am also prepared to work with a small on-line dictionary and manually extract the required knowledge. The knowledge is sought for the design of lexicon and semantic knowledge for a restricted NL front end (for encoding rules). Eric Tsui eric@aragorn.oz Division of Computing and Mathematics Deakin University Geelong, Victoria 3217 AUSTRALIA ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Jul 88 15:05 EDT From: Bob Freidin <bob@mind.UUCP> Subject: Chomsky awarded Kyoto Prize in basic sciences On June 24th the Inamori Foundation of Japan announced the recipients of this year's Kyoto Prizes. Basic Sciences: Noam Chomsky (for contributions to Linguistics) Advanced Technology: John McCarthy (for pioneering in Artificial Intelligence) Creative Arts and Moral Sciences: Paul Thieme (for contributions to the history of Indian philosophy) Each recipient will receive a prize of 45 million yen (approx. $350,000). This is the fourth year these prizes, characterized as Japan's version of the Nobel, have been awarded. Kyoto Prize Laureates in the first two areas include: Basic Sciences Advanced Technology 1985: Claude E. Shannon Rudolf Emil Kalman 1986: George E. Hutchinson Nicole M. Le Douarin 1987: Jan H. Oort Morris Cohen ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Robert Freidin Director Program in Linguistics Princeton University ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Jul 88 19:31 EDT From: Walter Rolandi <rolandi@gollum.UUCP> Subject: text-to-speech, text-to-phoneme, or text-to-syllable algorithms Thanks to all those who responded to my request for ways to identify the syllables of English. Several people suggested text-to-speech algorithms but no one has offered to provide one. Does anyone have a text-to-speech algorithm that they would be willing to post? I am sure many people would be interested. Thanks. Walter Rolandi rolandi@ncrcae.UUCP rolandi@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM NCR Advanced Systems Development, Columbia, SC ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Jul 88 17:46 EDT From: TALMAGE%VUVAXCOM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Subject: Implementing dictionaries The Background Information: This year I'm enrolled in the Esperanto Postal Course given for free by the Esperanto League for North America. The language Esperanto seems much easier to learn than French was for me; I feel as though I can do more with Esperanto after the first three lessons than I could with French after a year of lessons. Some of this, I suppose, may be because I've already some background in learning languages. The second one is supposed to be easier than the first. Along with the Postal Course, I've decided to see how far I can go in using my computer to translate Esperanto into English. I'm doing this work in Icon and it's progressing very quickly. Already the software can recognize the part of speech of most of the words in the vocabulary. It can, on my Amiga, pronounce those words as well. For now, I'm content to go with a word-for-word translation. I've seen the recent postings of wfw translations of Chinese, Hungarian(?), Dutch, and "WeirdSpeak" in NL-KR Digest and am amused. A more robust method of translation will come around once I learn more about Esperanto and machine translation. The Query: I'm about ready to implement a dictionary and would like to hear from people with ideas about this. Book references would be fine, as would suggestions from people who are doing something like this. Here is a version of the dictionary I may implement. It's perhaps too simple, not accounting for some kinds of idioms, but I think it will work. This is what each entry in the dictionary will look like. record Entry( PartOfSpeech, SemanticList ) record Semantic( Attributes, DefinitionList ) The dictionary will be a table whose entry values are root words and whose assigned values are lists of Entry. There will be at most one Entry per PartOfSpeech. For each PartOfSpeech there will be a list of semantic components, SemanticList. Each Semantic has a unique set of Attributes and a list of definitions that apply to words with those attributes. This is what part of the the dictionary entry for the root "ami" will look like. It is incomplete, of course. There are several other attributes for the verbs and I've left out the entries for adjectives and adverbs. Dictionary[ "ami" ] := [ Entry( noun, [ Semantic( singular + male, ["friend", "male friend"] ), Semantic( singular + female, ["friend", "female friend"] ), Semantic( plural + male, ["friends", "female friends"] ), Semantic( plural + female, ["friends", "female friends"] ) ] ), Entry( verb, [ Semantic( infinitive, ["to love"] ), Semantic( present, ["love", "loves"] ), Semantic( past, ["loved"] ), Semantic( future, ["will love", "shall love" ] ) ] ) ] To find the word "amikino", which means "female friend", in the dictionary, we find its part of speech and its attributes by removing the grammar coded suffixes. "O" comes first and tells us we have a noun. "In" gives us the attributed for female. There is another rule for removing the "k" but I don't know what it is yet. I suspect there is a general rule for making nouns from root verbs. So now we've removed "kino", leaving us with the root word "ami", which is also, I think, the infinitive form of the verb, to love. Next we look in the dictionary for "ami" and we find that list of Entries. In the first Entry, we see the PartOfSpeech noun so we search its list of Semantics until we find one with the Attributes female. This gives us the list of possible definitions "friend" and "female friend". With kind regards, David Talmage ______________________________________________________________________________ David W. Talmage / Villanova U / University Computing and Information Services UUCP: ...!vu-vlsi!excalibur!talmage Bitnet: talmage@vuvaxcom <best choice> Arpa-gate: talmage%vuvaxcom.bitnet@your-favorite-gateway ------------------------------ End of NL-KR Digest *******************