FOX@VTCS1.BITNET ("Edward A. Fox") (11/27/87)
IRList Digest Friday, 27 November 1987 Volume 3 : Issue 44
Today's Topics:
Announcement - ACL Applied Nat. Lang. Conf. Program (very long)
News addresses are
Internet or CSNET: fox@vtcs1.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: fox@vtcs1.bitnet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 87 18:13:42 est
From: Don Walker <walker@FLASH.BELLCORE.COM>
Subject: ACL Applied Natural Language Conference announcement
The printed version of the following program and registration information
will be mailed to ACL members early in December. Others are encouraged
to use the attached form or write for a booklet to the following address:
Dr. D.E. Walker (ACL), 445 South Street - MRE 2A379, Morristown, NJ 07960,
USA, or to walker@flash.bellcore.com, specifying "ACL Applied" on the
subject line.
ASSOCIATION
FOR
COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
SECOND CONFERENCE ON APPLIED NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
9 - 12 February 1988
Austin Marriott at the Capitol, Austin, Texas, USA
Tutorials: Joe C. Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas at Austin
ADVANCE PROGRAM
Features:
Six introductory and advanced tutorials
Three days of papers on the state-of-the-art
Distinguished luncheon speakers
A panel of industry leaders
Exhibits and demonstrations
REGISTRATION : 7:30am - 3:00pm, Tuesday, 9 February,
Joe C. Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas at Austin, 26th
and Red River.
7:00pm - 9:00PM, Tuesday, 9 February
8:00am - 5:00pm, Wednesday, 10 February
8:00am - 5:00pm, Thursday, 11 February
8:00am - 12:00n, Friday, 12 February
Austin Marriott at the Capitol, 701 East 11th Street
EXHIBITS : 10:00am - 6:00pm, Wednesday, 10 February
10:00am - 6:00pm, Thursday, 11 February
9:00am - 12:00n, Friday, 12 February
Austin Marriott at the Capitol
TUTORIALS: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1988
Joe C. Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas at Austin, 26th
and Red River.
8:30 12:30 INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
James Allen, University of Rochester
8:30 12:30 MACHINE-READABLE DICTIONARIES: A COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
PERSPECTIVE
Bran Boguraev, Cambridge University, and
Beth Levin, Northwestern University
8:30 12:30 SPOKEN LANGUAGE SYSTEMS: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Salim Roucos, BBN Laboratories, Inc.
1:30 5:30 THE TECHNOLOGY OF NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACES
Carole Hafner, Northeastern University
1:30 5:30 THE ROLE OF LOGIC IN REPRESENTING MEANING AND KNOWLEDGE
Bob Moore, SRI International
1:30 5:30 MACHINE TRANSLATION
Sergei Nirenburg, Carnegie Mellon University
RECEPTION: 7:00pm - 9:00pm, Tuesday, 9 February
Austin Marriott at the Capitol, 701 East 11th Street
GENERAL SESSIONS
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1988
9:00 9:15 OPENING REMARKS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
Norman Sondheimer, General Chair (USC/Information Sciences
Institute)
Bruce Ballard, Program Chair (AT&T Bell Laboratories)
Jonathan Slocum, Local Arrangements Chair (MCC)
Donald E. Walker, ACL Secretary-Treasurer (Bell Communications
Research)
SESSION 1: SYSTEMS
9:15 9:40 The Multimedia Articulation of Answers in a Natural Language
Query System
Susan E. Brennan (Hewlett Packard)
9:40 10:05 A News Story Categorization System
Philip J. Hayes, Laura E. Knecht and Monica J. Cellio
(Carnegie Group)
10:05 10:30 An Architecture for Anaphora Resolution
Elaine Rich and Susann Luper-Foy (MCC)
SESSION 2: GENERATION
11:00 11:25 The SEMSYN Generation System: Ingredients, Applications,
Prospects
Dietmar Roesner (Universitaet Stuttgart)
11:25 11:50 Two Simple Prediction Algorithms to Facilitate Text Production
Lois Boggess (Mississippi State University)
11:50 12:15 From Water to Wine: Generating Natural Language Text from
Today's Applications Programs
David D. McDonald (Brattle Research Corporation) and
Marie M. Meteer (Bolt, Beranek and Newman)
12:15 2:00 LUNCHEON
Guest Speaker: Grant Dove
Chairman and CEO of MCC. Prior to joining MCC in July l987,
Mr. Dove had been with Texas Instruments for 28 years,
having served as Executive Vice President since l982.
SESSION 3: SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
2:00 2:25 Improved Portability and Parsing Through Interactive
Acquisition of Semantic Information
Francois-Michel Lang and Lynettte Hirschman (Unisys)
2:25 2:50 Handling Scope Ambiguities in English
Sven Hurum (University of Alberta)
2:50 3:15 Responding to Semantically Ill-Formed Input
Ralph Grishman and Ping Peng (New York University)
and
Evaluation of a Parallel Chart Parser
Ralph Grishman and Mahesh Chitrao (New York University)
SESSION 4: MORPHOLOGY AND THE LEXICON
3:45 4:10 Triphone Analysis: A Combined Method for the Correction of
Orthographical and Typographical Errors
Koenraad DeSmedt (University of Nijmegen) and
Brigette van Berkel (TNO Institute of Applied Computer
Science)
4:10 4:35 Creating and Querying Hierarchical Lexical Databases
Mary S. Neff, Roy J. Byrd, and Omneya A. Rizk
(IBM Watson Research Center)
4:35 5:00 Cn yur cmputr raed ths?
Linda G. Means (General Motors)
5:00 5:25 Building a Large Thesaurus for Information Retrieval
Edward A. Fox, J. Terry Nutter (Virginia Tech), Thomas Ahlswede,
Martha Evens (Illinois Institute of Technology), and
Judith Markowitz (Navistar International)
6:30 **** RECEPTION
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1988
SESSION 5: SYSTEMS
8:30 8:55 Application-Specific Issues in NLI Development for
a Diagnostic Expert System
Karen L. Ryan, Rebecca Root and Duane Olawsky (Honeywell)
8:55 9:20 The MULTIVOC Text-to-Speech System
Olivier Emorine and Pierre Martin (Cap Sogeti Innovation)
9:20 9:45 Structure from Anarchy: Meta Level Representation of
Expert System Predicates for Natural Language Interfaces
Galina Datskovsky Moerdler (Columbia University)
SESSION 6: TEXT PROCESSING
10:15 10:40 Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies in a Text
Processing System
Lisa F. Rau and Paul S. Jacobs (General Electric)
10:40 11:05 A Stochastic Parts Program and Noun Phrase Parser for
Unrestricted Text
Kenneth W. Church (AT&T Bell Laboratories)
11:05 11:30 A Tool for Investigating the Synonymy Relation in a Sense
Disambiguated Thesaurus
Martin S. Chodorow, Yael Ravin (IBM Watson Research Center)
and Howard E. Sachar (IBM Data Systems Division)
11:30 11:55 Dictionary Text Entries as a Source of Knowledge
for Syntactic and Other Disambiguations
Karen Jensen and Jean-Louis Binot (IBM Watson Research Center)
12:00 1:45 LUNCHEON
Guest Speaker: Donald E. Walker
Manager of Artificial Intelligence and Information Science
Research at Bell Communications Research, and
Secretary-Treasurer of ACL and IJCAII..
SESSION 7: MACHINE TRANSLATION
1:45 2:10 EUROTRA: Practical Experience with a Multilingual Machine
Translation System under Development
Giovanni B. Varile and Peter Lau (Commission of the
European Communities)
2:10 2:35 Valency and MT: Recent Developments in the METAL System
Rudi Gebruers (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
3:00 5:00 PANEL: Natural Language Interfaces: Present and Future
Moderator: Norman Sondheimer (USC/Information Sciences
Institute)
Panelists: Robert J. Bobrow (BBN Laboratories),
Developer of RUS
Jerrold Ginsparg (Natural Language Inc.),
Developer of DataTalker
Larry Harris (Artificial Intelligence Corporation),
Developer of Intellect
Gary G. Hendrix (Symantec), Developer of Q&A
Steve Klein (Singular Solutions Engineering)
Co-Developer of Lotus HOW
5:00 6:00 RECEPTION
Austin Marriott at the Capitol
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1988
SESSION 8: SYSTEMS
8:30 8:55 Automatically Generating Natural Language Reports
in an Office Environment
Jugal Kalita and Sunil Shende (University of Pennsylvania)
8:55 9:20 Luke: An Experiment in the Early Integration of Natural
Language Processing
David A. Wroblewski and Elaine A. Rich (MCC)
9:20 9:45 The Experience of Developing a Large-Scale Natural
Language Text Processing System: CRITIQUE
Stephen D. Richardson and Lisa C. Braden-Harder
(IBM Watson Research Center)
SESSION 9: MORPHOLOGY AND THE LEXICON
10:15 10:40 Computational Techniques for Improved Name Search
Beatrice T. Oshika (Sparta), Bruce Evans (TRW),
Janet Tom (Systems Development Corporation), and Filip Machi
(UC Berkeley)
10:40 11:05 The TICC: Parsing Interesting Text
David Allport (University of Sussex)
11:05 11:30 Finding Clauses in Unrestricted Text by Stochastic and
Finitary Methods
Eva Ejerhed (University of Umea)
11:30 11:55 Morphological Processing in the Nabu System
Jonathan Slocum (MCC)
SESSION 10: SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS
1:30 1:55 Localizing Expression of Ambiguity
John Bear and Jerry R. Hobbs (SRI International)
1:55 2:20 Combinatorial Disambiguation
Paula S. Newman (IBM Los Angeles Scientific Center)
2:20 2:45 Canonical Representation in NLP System Design:
A Critical Evaluation
Kent Wittenburg and Jim Barnett (MCC)
REGISTRATION INFORMATION AND DIRECTIONS
PREREGISTRATION MUST BE RECEIVED BY 25 JANUARY; after that date, please
wait to register at the Conference itself. Complete the attached
``Application for Registration'' and send it with a check payable to
Association for Computational Linguistics or ACL to Donald E. Walker
(ACL), Bell Communications Research, 445 South Street MRE 2A379,
Morristown, NJ 07960, USA; (201) 829-4312; walker@flash.bellcore.com;
ucbvax!bellcore!walker. If a registration is cancelled before 25
January, the registration fee, less $15 for administrative costs, will
be returned. Full conference registrants will also receive lunch on
the 10th and 11th. Registration includes one copy of the Proceedings,
available at the Conference. Copies of the Proceedings at $20 for
members ($30 for nonmembers) may be ordered on the registration form or
by mail prepaid from Walker.
TUTORIALS : Attendance is limited. Preregistration is encouraged
to ensure a place and the availability of syllabus materials.
RECEPTIONS : The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
(MCC) will host a reception for the conference at its site on
Wednesday evening. To aid in planning we ask that you complete the
RSVP on the registration form. In addition there will be receptions
at the conference hotel on Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon.
EXHIBITS AND DEMONSTRATIONS : Facilities for exhibits and system
demonstrations will be available. Persons wishing to arrange an
exhibit or present a demonstration should contact Kent Wittenburg,
MCC, 3500 W. Balcones Center Drive, Austin, TX 78759; (512)338-3626;
wittenburg@mcc.com as soon as possible.
HOTEL RESERVATIONS : Reservations at the Austin Marriott at the
Capitol MUST be made using the Hotel Reservation Form included with
this flyer. Reservations subject to guest room availability for
reservations received after 25 January 1988. Please mail to:
Austin Marriott at the Capitol
Attn: Reservation Office
701 East 11th Street
Austin, Texas 78701
(512) 478-1111
AIR TRANSPORTATION : American Airlines offers conferees a special 35%
off full coach fare, 30% off full Y fares for passengers originating in
Canada, or 5% off any published roundtrip airfare applicable to and
from Austin. Call toll free 1-800-433-1790 and give the conference's
STAR number S81816. If you normally use the service of a travel agent,
please have them make your reservations through this number.
DIRECTIONS : There is one public exit from Robert Mueller Airport in
Austin; at the traffic light, turn right (onto Manor Rd.) and drive to
Airport Blvd. (approx. 1/4 - 1/2 mile). Turn right on Airport Blvd.,
and drive to highway I-35 (approx. 1-2 miles). Turn left (south) onto
I-35, heading toward town. Get off at the 11th-12th St. (Capitol)
exit, and drive an extra block on the access road, to 11th St. The
Marriott is on the SW corner of that intersection (across 11th St., on
the right). A parking garage is attached.
The Marriott at the Capitol operates a free shuttle to and from the
airport. Cab fare would be approx. $6.
The Joe C. Thompson Conference Center parking lot is on the SW corner
of Red River and 26th Street; the entrance is on Red River, and a guard
will point out the center (adjacent, to the west). Directions to JCT
from Marriott parking garage: Turn right (S) on I-35 frontage road,
turn right (W) on 10th St., turn right (N) on Red River, and drive
[almost] to 26th.
APPLICATION FOR REGISTRATION
Association for Computational Linguistics, Second Conference on
Applied Natural Language Processing, 9 - 12 February 1988, Austin, Texas
NAME _________________________________________________________________
Last First Middle
AFFILIATION (Short form for badge ID)
___________________________________________________________
ADDRESS _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
TELEPHONE ____________________________________________________________
COMPUTER NET ADDRESS _________________________________________________
REGISTRATION INFORMATION (circle fee)
NOTE: Only those whose dues are paid for 1988 can register as members.
ACL NON- FULL-TIME
MEMBER* MEMBER* STUDENT*
by 25 JANUARY $170 $205 $85
at the Conference $220 $255 $110
*Member and Non-Member fees include Wednesday and Thursday luncheons;
Students can purchase luncheon tickets at a reduced rate.
LUNCHEON TICKETS FOR STUDENTS: $10 each; Wednesday _____;
Thursday ________; amount enclosed $ ______
LUNCHEON TICKETS FOR GUESTS: $15 each; Wednesday _____;
Thursday ________; amount enclosed $ ______
SPECIAL MEALS: VEGETARIAN ______ KOSHER ______
EXTRA PROCEEDINGS: $20 members; $30 non-members; amount enclosed $ ______
TUTORIAL INFORMATION (circle fee and check at most two
tutorials)
FEE PER TUTORIAL ACL NON- FULL-TIME
MEMBER MEMBER* STUDENT
by 25 January $75 $110 $50
at the Conference $100 $135 $65
*Non-member tutorial fee includes ACL membership for 1988;
do not pay non-member fee for BOTH registration and tutorials.
Morning Tutorials:
select ONE: INTRODUCTION: Allen LEXICONS: Boguraev & SPEECH: Roucos
Levin
Afternoon Tutorials:
select ONE: INTERFACES: Hafner LOGIC: Moore TRANSLATION: Nirenburg
TOTAL PAYMENT MUST BE INCLUDED : $ ____________
(Registration, Luncheons, Extra Proceedings, Tutorials)
Make checks payable to ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS or
ACL. Credit cards cannot be honored.
RSVP for MCC Reception: Please check if you plan to attend the MCC
reception on Wednesday evening, February 10th. _________
Send Application for Registration WITH PAYMENT before 25 January to
the address below; AFTER 25 January, wait to register at Conference:
Donald E. Walker (ACL)
Bell Communications Research
445 South Street, MRE 2A379
Morristown, NJ 07960, USA
(201)829-4312
walker@flash.bellcore.com
ucbvax!bellcore!walker
APPLICATION FOR HOTEL REGISTRATION
Reservations subject to guest room availability for reservations
received after 25 January 1988. In the event of unanticipated demand,
rooms will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Please
send in your reservation request as early as possible.
NAME _________________________________________________________________
Last First Middle
AFFILIATION
___________________________________________________________
ADDRESS _______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
TELEPHONE ____________________________________________________________
Room Requirements
Single $64 ________
Double $74 ________
Date and time of arrival _________________________________________
Date and time of departure _______________________________________
Complete if arrival after 6PM
__________________________________________________________________
Credit Card Name Number Expiration Date
Send Application for Hotel Reservation to:
Austin Marriott at the Capitol
Attn: Reservation Office
701 East 11th Street
Austin, Texas 78701
(512) 478-1111
ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
SECOND CONFERENCE ON APPLIED NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
TUTORIALS
9 February 1988
Joe C. Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas at Austin
Morning 8:30 A.M. - 12:30 P.M.
8:30 12:30 INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
James Allen, University of Rochester
ABSTRACT
This tutorial will cover the basic concepts underlying the construction
of natural language processing systems. These include basic parsing
techniques, semantic interpretation and the representation of sentence
meaning, as well as knowledge representation and techniques for
understanding natural language in context. In particular, the topics
to be addressed in detail will include augmented transition networks
(ATNs), augmented context-free grammars, the representation of lexical
meaning, especially looking at case-grammar based representations, and
the interpretation of pronouns and ellipsis. In addition, there will
be an overview of knowledge representation, including semantic
networks, frame-based systems, and logic, and the use of general world
knowledge in language understanding, including scripts and plans.
Given the large range of issues and techniques, an emphasis will be
placed on those aspects relevant to existing practical natural
language systems, such as interfaces to database systems. The
remaining issues will be more quickly surveyed to give the attendee
an idea of what techniques will become important in the next
generation of natural language systems. The lecture notes will
include an extensive bibliography of work in each area.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This tutorial is aimed at people who are interested in learning the
fundamental techniques and ideas relevant to natural language
processing. It will be useful to managers who want an overview of
the field, to programmers starting research and development in the
natural language area, and to researchers in related disciplines such
as linguistics who want a survey of the computational approaches to
language.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Dr. James Allen is an Associate Professor and Chairman of the
Computer Science Department at the University of Rochester. He is
editor of the journal Computational Linguistics and author of the
book Natural Language Understanding, published in 1987. In 1984, he
received a five-year Presidential Young Investigator award for his
research in Artificial Intelligence.
8:30 12:30 MACHINE-READABLE DICTIONARIES: A COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
PERSPECTIVE
Branimir Boguraev, Cambridge University, and
Beth Levin, Northwestern University
ABSTRACT
The lexical information contained explicitly and implicitly in
machine-readable dictionaries (MRDs) can support a wide range of
activities in computational linguistics, both of theoretical interest
and of practical importance. This tutorial falls into two parts.
The first part will focus on some characteristics of raw lexical data
in electronic sources, which make MRDs particularly relevant to
natural language processing applications. The second part will
discuss how theoretical linguistic research into the lexicon can
enhance the contribution of MRDs to applied computational
linguistics.
The first half will discuss issues concerning the placement of
rich lexical resources on-line; raise questions related to the
suitability, and ultimately the utility, of MRDs for automatic
natural language processing; outline a methodology aimed at
extracting maximally usable subsets of the dictionary with minimal
introduction of errors; and present ways in which specific use can be
made of the lexical data for the construction of practical language
processing systems with substantial coverage.
The second half of the tutorial will review current theoretical
linguistic research on the lexicon, emphasizing proposals concerning
the nature of lexical representation and lexical organization. This
overview will provide the context for an examination of how the
results of this research can be brought to bear on the problem of
extracting syntactic and semantic information encoded in dictionary
entries, but not overtly signaled to the dictionary user.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This tutorial presupposes some familiarity with work in both
computational and theoretical linguistics. It is aimed at
researchers in natural language processing and theoretical linguists
who want to take advantage of the resources available in MRDs for
both applied and theoretical purposes. The issues of providing
substantial lexical coverage and system transportability are
addressed, thus making this tutorial of particular relevance to those
concerned with the automatic acquisition, on a large scale and in a
flexible format, of phonological, syntactic, and semantic information
for nlp systems.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Dr. Branimir Boguraev is an SERC (UK Science & Engineering Research
Council) Advanced Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He
has been with the Computer Laboratory since 1975, and completed a
doctoral thesis in natural language processing there in 1979.
Recently he has been involved in the development of computational
tools for natural language processing, funded by grants awarded by
the UK Alvey Programme in Information Technology.
Dr. Beth Levin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. She was a System
Development Foundation Research Fellow at the MIT Center for Cognitive
Science from 1983-1987 where she assumed major responsibility for
directing the MIT Lexicon Project. She received her Ph.D. in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in June 1983.
8:30 12:30 SPOKEN LANGUAGE SYSTEMS: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Salim Roucos, BBN Laboratories, Inc.
ABSTRACT:
This tutorial will present the issues in developing spoken language
systems for natural speech communication between a person and a
machine. In particular, the performance of complex tasks using large
vocabularies and unrestricted sentence structures will be examined.
The first Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) Speech Understanding
Research project during the seventies will be reviewed, and then the
current state-of-the-art in continuous speech recognition and natural
language processing will be described. Finally, the types of spoken
language systems' capabilities expected to be developed during the next
two to three years will be presented.
The technical issues that will be covered include acoustic-phonetic
modeling, syntax, semantics, plan recognition and discourse, and the
issues for integrating these knowledge sources for speech understanding.
In addition, computational requirements for real-time understanding,
and performance evaluation methodology will be described. Some of the
human factors of speech understanding in the context of performing
interactive tasks using an integrated interface will also be
discussed.
INTENDED AUDIENCE:
This tutorial is aimed at technical managers, product developers, and
technical staff interested in learning about spoken language systems
and their potential applications. No expertise in either speech or
natural language will be assumed in introducing the technical details
in the tutorial.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Dr. Salim Roucos has worked for seven years at BBN Laboratories in
speech processing such as continuous speech recognition, speaker
recognition, and speech compression. More recently, he has been the
principal investigator on integrating speech recognition and natural
language understanding for developing a spoken language system. His
areas of interest are statistical pattern recognition and language
modeling. Dr. Roucos is chairman of the Digital Signal Processing
committee of the IEEE ASSP society.
Afternoon 1:30 P.M. - 5:30 P.M.
1:30 5:30 THE TECHNOLOGY OF NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERFACES
Carole D. Hafner, Northeastern University
ABSTRACT
This tutorial will describe the development of natural language
processing from a research topic into a commercial technology. This
will include a description of some key research projects of the 1970's
and early 1980's which developed methods for building natural language
query interfaces, initially restricted to just one database, and later
made "transportable" to many different applications. The further
development of this technology into commercial software products will
be discussed and illustrated by a survey of several current products,
including both micro-computer NL systems and those offered on
higher-performance machines. The qualities a user should look for in a
NL interface will be considered, both in terms of linguistic
capabilities and general ease of use. Finally, some of the remaining
"hard problems" that current technology has not yet solved in a
satisfactory way will be discussed.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This tutorial is aimed at people who are not well acquainted with
natural language interfaces and who would like to learn about 1) the
capabilities of current systems, and 2) the technology that underlies
these capabilities.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Dr. Carole D. Hafner is Associate Professor of Computer Science at
Northeastern University. After receiving her Ph.D. in Computer and
Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan, she spent
several years as a Staff Scientist at General Motors Research
Laboratories working on the development of a natural language
interface to databases.
1:30 5:30 THE ROLE OF LOGIC IN REPRESENTING MEANING AND KNOWLEDGE
Robert C. Moore, SRI International
ABSTRACT
This tutorial will survey the use of logic to represent the meaning
of utterances and the extra-linguistic knowledge needed to produce
and interpret utterances in natural-language processing systems.
Problems to be discussed in meaning representation include
quantification, propositional attitudes, comparatives, mass terms and
plurals, tense and aspect, and event sentences and adverbials.
Logic-based methods (unification) for systematic specification of the
correspondence between syntax and semantics in natural language
processing systems will also be touched on. In the discussion of the
representation of extra-linguistic knowledge, special attention will
be devoted to the role played by knowledge of speakers' and hearers'
mental states (particularly their knowledge and beliefs) in the
generation and interpretation of utterances and logical formalisms
for representing and reasoning about knowledge of those states.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This tutorial is aimed at implementors of natural-language processing
systems and others interested in logical approaches to the problems
of meaning representation and knowledge representation in such
systems.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Dr. Robert C. Moore is a staff scientist in the Artificial
Intelligence Center of SRI International. Since joining SRI in 1977,
Dr. Moore has carried out research on natural-language processing,
knowledge representation, automatic deduction, and nonmonotonic
reasoning. In 1986-87 he was the first director of SRI's Computer
Science Research Centre in Cambridge, England. Dr. Moore received
his PhD from MIT in 1979.
1:30 5:30 MACHINE TRANSLATION
Sergei Nirenburg, Carnegie Mellon University
ABSTRACT
The central problems faced by a Machine Translation (MT) research
project are 1) the design and implementation of automatic natural
language analyzers and generators that manipulate morphological,
syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge; and 2) the design,
acquisition and maintenance of dictionaries and grammars. Since a
short-term goal (or even medium term goal) of building a system that
performs fully automated machine translation of unconstrained text is
not feasible, an MT project must carefully constrain its objectives.
This tutorial will describe the knowledge and processing requirements
for an MT system. It will present and analyze the set of design
choices for MT projects including distinguishing features such as
long-term/short-term, academic/commercial, fully/partially automated,
direct/transfer/interlingua, pre-/post-/interactive editing. The
knowledge acquisition needs of an MT system, with an emphasis on
interactive knowledge acquisition tools that facilitate the task of
compiling the various dictionaries for an MT system will be
discussed. In addition, expectations, possibilities and prospects
for immediate application of machine translation technology will be
considered. Finally, a brief survey of MT research and development
work around the world will be presented.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This tutorial is aimed at at a general audience that could include
both students looking for an application area and testbed for their
ideas in natural language processing and people contemplating
starting an MT or machine-aided translation project.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Dr. Sergei Nirenburg, Research Scientist at the Center for Machine
Translation at Carnegie-Mellon University, holds an M.Sc. in
Computational Linguistics from Kharkov State University, USSR, and a
Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Israel. He has published in the fields of parsing, generation,
machine translation, knowledge representation and acquisition, and
planning. Dr. Nirenburg is Editor of the journal Computers and
Translation.
SECOND CONFERENCE ON APPLIED NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Conference Committee
General Chair
Norman Sondheimer, USC/Information Sciences Institute
Secretary-Treasurer
Donald E. Walker, Bell Communications Research
Program Committee
Bruce Ballard (Chair), AT&T Bell Laboratories
Madeleine Bates, BBN Laboratories
Tim Finin, Unisys
Ralph Grishman, New York University
Carole Hafner, Northeastern University
George Heidorn, IBM Corporation
Paul Martin, SRI International
Graeme Ritchie, University of Edinburgh
Harry Tennant, Texas Instruments
Tutorials
Martha Palmer, Unisys
Local Arrangements
Jonathan Slocum, MCC (Chair)
Elaine Rich, MCC
Exhibits and Demonstrations
Kent Wittenburg, MCC
Publicity
Jeffrey Hill and Brenda Nashawaty, Artificial Intelligence Corporation
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
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