FOX@VTCS1.BITNET ("Edward A. Fox") (11/26/87)
IRList Digest Thursday, 26 November 1987 Volume 3 : Issue 43
Today's Topics:
Discussion - Research on library catalogs and IR
- Research on library catalogs with extended Boolean logic
CSLI - Profiles of visitors to CSLI
News addresses are
Internet or CSNET: fox@vtcs1.cs.vt.edu
BITNET: fox@vtcs1.bitnet
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 87 11:06:59 CST
From: JEFF HUESTIS <C81350JH@WUVMD>
Subject: RE: RE: LEXICON DEVELOPMENT
[Note: This is a continuation of some discussion with Jeff Huestis
from earlier IRList issues. Jeff has the opportunity to do
experiments with real online catalog data, and so I thought it might
be of interest to IRList readers to consider how "advanced" retrieval
methods might be tested there, and to suggest what studies could be
done with the data that is accumulating. I think that is enough
background to get you into the context of the discussion. - Ed]
I don't have the Brown corpus either, although "we could get it", I
suppose. What I have (or "had", since I haven't seen it lately) is a
dittoed sheet of the 400 most common words, that Dillon passed out in
the first, introductory, programming course I took from him when I was
still a graduate student in linguistics. I had somebody key that sheet
into machine-readable form when I was up at Michigan Tech.
[Now discussing idea of research project ... - Ed]
... When we talk about more commitment of people resources or
extensions to our hardware environment then ... I need to
think in terms of at least a ... grant, or alternatively, I need
to find ... something "interesting" also contributes to our
support for library operations (I've done a good deal of that). On the
other hand, if you want to talk about an intelligent front-end that
could interface with VTLS and/or NOTIS, extensible to other systems (say
other library systems as well as database searching utilities), possibly
in a distributed framework oriented toward the OSI "Linked Systems"
project that LC, RLIN, et al, are involved in, then some place
... might be willing to [provide funds] ... Foundations that give
money to libraries are a lot like venture capitalists investing in expert
systems.
[Note: Well, any comments? See next note too. - Ed]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 16:16:10 CST
From: JEFF HUESTIS <C81350JH@WUVMD>
Subject: A WEIGHTY MATTER
I got started thinking about "angles" this morning while waiting for
recovery from a disk crash, and started looking at your "Extended
boolean information retrieval" paper. I noticed the location beside
your name under the title--Ibadan--and was surprised to discover you're
an old Third World hand; there aren't too many in this business. I did
a stint in Nepal, back in '72-'73. In fact, that is where I got
interested in linguistics, which led to libraries and computers.
[Note: I have heard that the agricultural community is doing some
interesting work with CDROM database, and is trying to use SGML for
some of the international centers. - Ed]
The general idea of extending boolean with other techniques may be a
good "angle" ...
The arguments put forward in yours and other articles
about the shortcomings of basic boolean, and ways in which it might be
improved, may be useful in arguing against acquisition of a system that
we can't modify.
[Note: we have done some testing here with extended Boolean retrieval
on a large library catalog. Preliminary information should come out
in an article that I expect to appear in "Information Services and
Use" in 1988 - Ed]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 87 17:08:28 PST
From: emma
Subject: CSLI Calendar, November 5, 3:6 [Extract - Ed]
[Note: I thought it might be of interest to find out about visitors to
CSLI and their work. - Ed]
CURRENT VISITORS
SYLVAIN BROMBERGER
Professor of Philosophy
Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dates of visit: September 1987--July 1988
Bromberger is currently interested in the philosophy of linguistics
and in rational acquisition of knowledge. In the philosophy of
linguistics he is working on conceptual issues arising in
phonology/phonetics. Under rational acquisition of knowledge he is
interested in the limits that constrain search for knowledge guided by
questions and in the semantics of interrogatives. He is a regular
participant of the RATAG project.
KEITH DEVLIN
Reader in Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
University of Lancaster
Dates of visit: September 1987--August 1988
Devlin is a mathematical logician. About three years ago, his
interest in set theory gave way (via a brief passage through computer
science) to a desire to work out a genuine, mathematical theory of
information. He thought that the approach to this problem adopted by
Barwise and his colleagues at CSLI was the best way to proceed, and
has subsequently thrown his lot in with this gang. He is presently
writing a book on situation theory.
CARL GINET
Chair, Sage School of Philosophy
Cornell University
Dates of visit: June--December 1987
Ginet is a philosopher on sabbatic leave from Cornell. During his
stay at CSLI, he will be finishing a book on action, catching up on
the literature in epistemology, and refining software he has written
that guides students in constructing derivations in formal logic.
KIYONG LEE
Department of English
Korea University
Dates of visit: December 1986--December 1987
Lee is visiting CSLI on a senior research grant from the
Korean-American Educational Commission and the Council for
International Exchange of Scholars. He hopes to acquaint himself with
new developments in situation theory and semantics, and to write an
introductory book for Korean readers. While working on some
foundational aspects of situation theory, he is very much interested
in testing its adequacy in treating some concrete problems, especially
those related to negation, quantification, and tense/aspect in Korean.
He is participating in the STASS project while he is here and also
continues developing a computationally tractable, functor-driven,
phrase structure grammar of natural language by amalgamating a
categorial grammar with HPSG.
SALLY MCCONNELL-Ginet
Professor
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
Cornell University
Dates of visit: June--December 1987
During her time at CSLI (the first half of a year's sabbatic leave
from Cornell), McConnell-Ginet will be working on a book about formal
approaches to the analysis of vagueness. She will also be working on
a semantics text for linguistics that she and Gennaro Chierchia are
coauthoring.
HIDEYUKI NAKASHIMA
Senior Researcher
Man-Machine Systems Section
Electrotechnical Laboratory
Dates of visit: September 1987--August 1988
Nakashima is interested in knowledge representation, reasoning, and
learning. He is also interested in a model of language acquisition.
He has his own knowledge-representation system based on logic
programming, called Uranus. He is planning to create a programming
language based on situation theory.
RONALD NASH
Dates of visit: January 1987--July 1988
Nash is at CSLI on a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is interested in the
philosophy of mind and normative psychology, and is particularly
interested in the work of CSLI's RATAG and DIA projects with respect
to the cognitive theory of emotion on which he has recently worked.
He hopes to construct a more formal model while he is here, and will
be looking at the various formal models being considered at CSLI.
KASPER OSTERBYE
Institute of Electronical Systems, Aalborg
University of Aarhus
Dates of visit: September 1986--September 1987
Osterbye's recent work has been on programming languages, especially
dealing with interactive higher-level debugging. At CSLI, he is
participating in the SDL project.
GORDON PLOTKIN
Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Edinburgh
Dates of visit: September 1987--October 1988
Plotkin is interested generally in issues of language and logic and
particularly in the modeling and formalization of situation theory and
in learning situation semantics. He is also interested in a variety
of issues in the denotational semantics of programming languages, such
as concurrency and probabilistic computation, and also in a usefully
implementable general proof theory. He is an active participant in
the STASS project.
BILL ROUNDS
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Michigan
Dates of visit: September 1987--June 1988
Rounds is a computer scientist interested in mathematical and
computational linguistics. He is developing logics for expressing
grammars and for understanding grammatical properties, with special
emphasis on unification-based grammatical systems. These logics can
also be used directly in implementations of such systems. He is
participating in the MOST project at CSLI.
HIROYUKI SUZUKI
Researcher
Systems Tokyo Research Department
Corporate Engineering Division
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.,Ltd.
Dates of visit: September 1986--March 1988
Suzuki's main interest lies in building Japanese dialog systems. He
is currently interested in designing a representation language for a
computer as a participant of conversations, and clarifying strategies
for generating sentences that are employed by human beings to keep
conversations coherent.
SYUN TUTIYA
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Letters
Chiba University
Dates of visit: November 1986--September 1988
Tutiya is interested in the development of speech acts theory within
the framework of situation theory and situation semantics. He is also
interested in quantification in Japanese, in Frege and the history of
logic after him, and has been translating `Situations and Attitudes'
into Japanese. He is an active participant in the STASS project.
SUSON YOO
Doctoral Candidate and Instructor
Department of Linguistics
Korea University
Dates of visit: March 1987--February 1988
Yoo is continuing her work with Kiyong Lee, currently at CSLI, and is
especially interested in learning more about situation theory and
unification grammar and investigating their universal ramifications by
testing their linguistic significance and computational applicability
to the analysis of Korean.
LOTFI ZADEH
Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
Dates of visit: Fall Quarter 1987
Zadeh developed "fuzzy" logic and set theory---the central idea being
that truth or membership in a set isn't simply binary, but permits a
continuum of values. He has attended many CSLI functions over the
past four years, especially on Thursdays, and we are pleased that he
has arranged to be here several days a week during fall quarter.
------------------------------
END OF IRList Digest
********************