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-/-\-/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM /-\-/-
There will be no colloq this week.
Next week, (2/7 3:30pm) Herman Hendriks will give a talk entitled
On the Semantics and Pragmatics of Information Packaging
--------------
For directions and a complete list of colloquia, see
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/colloq/colloq.html
-/-\-/ PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP /-\-/-
Margaret Jacks Hall, Seminar Rm 146
Thursday, January 30, 1997, 7:30 pm
TRISYLLABIC SHORTENING REVISITED
Aditi Lahiri
University of Konstanz
[No abstract available]
1. Future Workshop
Feb. 13 Charles Reiss (University of Concordia)
Feb. 20 Jaye Padgett (University of California, Santa Cruz)
2. All are welcome for pizza before the talk. R.S.V.P. and come at
7:00 pm (Rm 146). Thanks!
-/-\-/ SEMANTICS WORKSHOP /-\-/-
The next talk in the semantics workshop will be presented by Herman
Hendriks from Utrecht University. We will meet on Thursday February 6,
9--11 am in MJH 146, that is the big seminar room in the linguistics
department. All are welcome! Title and abstract below.
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`Information Structure and Grammar'
Herman Hendriks
The basic idea of `information packaging' (Chafe 1976) is that
speakers do not present information in an unstructured way, but that
they provide a hearer with detailed instructions on how to manipulate
and integrate the information according to their beliefs about the
hearer's knowledge and attentional state. Cross-language comparison
shows that in expressing information packaging, different languages
exploit word order and prosody in different ways, so that one single
informational construct is realized by drastically different
structural means across languages. Thus for English and Dutch it can
be argued that, roughly speaking, information packaging is
structurally realized by means of alternative intonational contours of
identical strings. Languages such as Catalan and Turkish, on the other
hand, are resistant to such an analysis: they have a constant prosodic
structure and realize information packaging by means of string order
permutations (Steedman 1991, Vallduvi 1992, 1993, Hoffman 1995).
The present talk will address the question how the various structural
realizations of information packaging can be handled by a sign-based
categorial grammar formalism which takes its inspiration from Oehrle's
(1988, 1993) work on generalized compositionality for multidimensional
linguistic objects and shares characteristics with Head-driven Phrase
Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag 1994). The signs, the grammatical
resources of this formalism, are Saussurian form-meaning units which
reflect the fact that the dimensions of form and meaning contribute to
well-formedness in an essentially parallel way.
The above generalizations provide confirmation that information
packaging involves syntax as well as prosody: hence any attempt to
reduce informational aspects to either syntax (for Catalan or Turkish,
cf. Hoffman 1995) or prosody (for Dutch or English, cf. Steedman 1991,
1992, 1993) is inadequate from a cross-linguistic perspective (see
also Engdahl and Vallduvi 1996). Accordingly, I will propose to treat
the different forms of information packaging by means of a both
intonationally/syntactically and semantically/informationally
interpreted grammar formalism which is essentially a sign-based
version of the double non-associative Lambek (1961) calculus of
Moortgat and Morrill (1991), enriched with the unary modal operators
of Moortgat (1996).
On the intonational/syntactic side, this yields a systematic account
of the range of variation in the structural realization of information
packaging displayed by Catalan and English. It can be noted that the
present treatment of focus differs from other proposals, including
extensions of standard Lambek calculus such as Oehrle (1991), Van der
Linden (1991) and Moortgat (1993), in that it lacks focusing
operators, but employs `defocusing' operators instead. This reflects
the fact that all-focus sentences somehow constitute the basic case,
from which the cases where there is a ground are derived.
On the semantic/informational side, the grammatical derivations are
interpreted into a type-theoretical version (Muskens 1993, 1994) of
Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp 1981, Kamp and Reyle 1993), a
deviation from approaches such as Reinhart (1982), Vallduv\'{\i}
(1994) and Erteschik-Shir (1997)---who use file systems along the
lines of Heim (1982, 1983)---which will be motivated in my second
talk, entitled `On the Semantics and Pragmatics of Information
Packaging'.
REFERENCES of talk (1):
Chafe, W. (1976). `Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definitness, Subjects,
Topics and Point of View'. In C.N. Li (ed.), Subject and
Topic. Associated Press, New York, pp. 25--55.
Engdahl, E. (ed.) (1994). Integrating Information Structure into
Constraint-based and Categorial Approaches. Esprit Basic Research
Project 6852, Dynamic Interpretation of Natural Language. Dyana-2
Deliverable R1.3.B. Illc, University of Amsterdam.
Engdahl, E., and E. Vallduvi (1996). `Information Packaging in
HPSG'. In C. Grover and E. Valduvi (eds.), Edinburgh Working Papers in
Cognitive Science, Vol. 12. Centre for Cognitive Science, The
University of Edinburgh, pp. 1--32.
Erteschik-Shir, N., (1997). The Dynamics of Focus Structure. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Heim, I. (1982). The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun
Phrases. Ph.D. Dissertation University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. Published in 1989 by Garland. New York.
Heim, I. (1983). `File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of
Definiteness'. In R. Bauerle, C. Schwarze and A. von Stechow (eds.),
Meaning, Use and Interpretation of Language. De Gruyter, Berlin,
pp. 164--189.
Hoffman, B. (1995). `Integrating ``Free'' Word Order Syntax and
Information Structure'. Manuscript, University of Pennsylvania.
Kamp, H. (1981). `A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation'. In
J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen and M. Stokhof (eds.), Formal Methods in
the Study of Language. Mathematical Centre, Amsterdam. Reprinted in
J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen and M. Stokhof (eds.) (1984), Truth,
Interpretation and Information. Selected Papers from the Third
Amsterdam Colloquium. Foris, Dordrecht.
Kamp, H., and U. Reyle (1993). From Discourse to Logic. Introduction
to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and
Discourse Representation Theory. Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Lambek, J. (1961). `On the Calculus of Syntactic Types'. In
R. Jakobson (ed.), Structure of Language and its Mathematical
Aspects. Providence.
Linden, E.-J. van der (1991). `Accent Placement and Focus in
Categorial Logic'. In S. Bird (ed.), Declarative Perspectives on
Phonology. Edinburgh Working Papers in Cognitive Science. Eccs,
Edinburgh.
Moortgat, M. (1993). `Generalized Quantifiation and Discontinuous Type
Constructors'. In W. Sijtsma and A. van Horck (eds.), Proceedings of
the Tilburg Symposium on Discontinuous Dependencies. De Gruyter,
Berlin.
Moortgat, M. (1996). `Multimodal Linguistic Inference'. In JoLLI 5,
pp. 349--385.
Moortgat, M., and G. Morrill (1991). `Heads and Phrases. Type Calculus
for Dependency and Constituent Structure'. OTS Research Paper,
University of Utrecht.
Muskens, R. (1993). `A Compositional Discourse Representation
Theory'. In P. Dekker and M. Stokhof (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth
Amsterdam Colloquium, Part II. Illc, University of Amsterdam.
Muskens, R. (1994). `Categorial Grammar and Discourse Representation
Theory' Manuscript. ITK, Tilburg University.
Oehrle, R. (1988). `Multidimensional Compositional Functions as a
Basis for Grammatical Analysis'. In R. Oehrle, E. Bach and D. Wheeler
(eds.), {\em Categorial Grammars and Natural Language
Structures\/}. Reidel, Dordrecht.
Oehrle, R. (1991). `Prosodic Constraints on Dynamic Grammatical
Analysis'. In S.\ Bird (ed.), Declarative Perspectives on
Phonology. Edinburgh Working Papers in Cognitive Science. Eccs,
Edinburgh.
Oehrle, R. (1993). `String-based Categorial Type Systems'.
Manuscript. Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Pollard, C., and I. Sag (1994). Head-Driven Phrase Structure
Grammar. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, and CSLI, Stanford.
Reinhart, T. (1982). `Pragmatics and Linguistics: An Analysis of
Sentence Topics'. Philosophica 27, 53--94.
Steedman, M. (1991). `Structure and Intonation'. Language {\bf 67},
pp. 260--296.
Steedman, M. (1992). `Surface Structure, Intonation and ``Focus''
'. In E. Klein and F. Veltman (eds.) Natural Language and
Speech. Symposium Proceedings, Brussels, November 1991. Springer,
Berlin.
Steedman, M. (1993). `The Grammar of Intonation and Focus'. In
P. Dekker and M. Stokhof (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth Amsterdam
Colloquium, Part III. Illc, University of Amsterdam.
Vallduvi, E. (1992). The Informational Component. Garland, New York.
Vallduvi, E. (1993). `Information Packaging: A Survey'. Report
prepared for Word Order, Prosody, and Information Structure. Centre
for Cognitive Science and Human Communication Research Centre,
University of Edinburgh.
Vallduvi, E. (1994). `The Dynamics of Information Packaging'. In
Engdahl (ed.), pp. 1--27.
-/-\-/ SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM /-\-/-
"How do we approach the brain basis of consciousness?"
by B. J. BAARS
on Thursday, 30 January
Room 146, Margaret Jacks Hall
Stanford University
at 4:15 pm
In almost twenty years of cognitive research on consciousness, the
indispensable evidentiary move has been to find closely contrasting
cases of conscious vs. unconscious mental representations (e.g. Baars,
1988, 1996). The same strategy can be applied to the brain basis of
consciousness. We can search for closely matched conscious
vs. unconscious brain processes. Much evidence along these lines is
already available, though it has often not been TALKED ABOUT (italics)
in that way, so we have to search for the brain contrasts
intelligently. A set of research paradigms that provide contrastive
evidence will be explored.
Bio:
I'm a cognitive psychologist with strong interests in cognitive science
neuroscience. My theoretical writing on consciousness goes back to 1983.
In 1988 my Cognitive Theory of Consciousness appeared, (Cambridge), and
currently, In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind, a
tradebook with Oxford. The common thread is Global Workspace (GW) theory,
derived from the cognitive modeling tradition of Alan Newell, Herbert A.
Simon and others. GW theory has implications for understanding voluntary
control, dovetailing with my laboratory work on induced slips of speech
and action. In the last decade I have worked increasingly on neuroscience
issues.
Baars, B.J. (1988) A cognitive theory of consciousness. NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Baars, B.J. (1996) In the theater of consciousness: The workspace of the
mind. NY: Oxford University Press.
-/-\-/ CALL FOR PAPERS /-\-/-
-- ACL'97 / EACL'97 Workshop, 11 July, 1997, Madrid, Spain.
OPERATIONAL FACTORS IN PRACTICAL, ROBUST, ANAPHORA RESOLUTION FOR
UNRESTRICTED TEXTS. This workshop has a dual focus. It solicits
submissions describing work which addresses the practical requirements
of operational and robust anaphora resolution components. It also
seeks to investigate the role of, and interactions among, the various
factors in anaphora resolution: in particular those that scale well,
or that translate easily to knowledge-poor environments. Authors are
asked to submit previously unpublished papers; all submissions should
be sent to Ruslan Mitkov. A limited number of position papers could
also be considered. Each submission will undergo multiple reviews.
The papers should be full length (not exceeding 3200 words, exclusive
of references), also including a descriptive abstract of about 200
words. Electronic submissions are strongly preferred, either in
self-contained LaTeX format (using the ACL-97 submission style; see:
ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/acl-l/, as well as the submission guidelines
for the main conference, at http://www.ieec.uned.es/cl97/), or as a
PostScript file. In exceptional circumstances, Microsoft Word files
will also be accepted as electronic submissions, provided they follow
the same formating guidelines. Hard copy submissions should include
eight copies of the paper. A separate title page should include the
title of the paper, names, addresses (postal and e-mail), telephone
and fax number of all authors. Any correspondence will be addressed
to the first author (unless otherwise specified). Authors will be
responsible for preparation of camera-ready copies of final versions
of accepted papers, conforming to a uniform format, with guidelines
and a style file to be supplied by the organisers.
SCHEDULE
Submission deadline: 14 March 1997
Notification of acceptance: 14 April 1997
Camera-ready versions of accepted papers due: 05 May 1997
Workshop: 11 July 1997
FURTHER INFORMATION
For further information concerning the workshop, please contact the
organisers. For information about the main ACL'97/EACL'97 conference,
see http://horacio.ieec.uned.es/cl97/.
-- ACL/EACL Workshop Submissions/Participation: Automatic Information
Extraction and Building of Lexical Semantic Resources for NLP
Applications. Organized under the auspices of the Language
Engineering section of the European Commission, Directorale General
XIII Luxembourg, by three recently launched projects. We are
soliciting papers on the following topics:
1. compatibility and standards of multilingual semantic resources and
lexical acquisition tools.
2. the validation of multilingual semantic resources and lexical
acquisition tools.
3. performances of semantic resources and lexical acquisition tools in
NLP tasks.
4. partial or phrasal parsing of text.
5. linking text with lexical databases: sense-differentiation,
sense-tagging and sense-disambiguation tasks, domain-differentiation
of text and lexical resources.
The workshop will be a full-day event that provides a forum for individual
presentations (about 30 minutes each) and discussions. At the end of day
there will be room for demos.
Full papers should be submitted in electronic format: either RTF or
postscript. Papers should not exceed 8 pages or 4000 words. The
deadline for submission is the 17th of March. Submissions should be
sent to
Piek Vossen
Computer Centrum Letteren
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 525 4669
Fax: +31 20 525 4429
Email: Piek.Vossen@let.uva.nl.
The number of participants is limited and is restricted on a first
come basis.. As the workshop takes place in conjunction with the
ACL/EACL-97 conference, presenters and participants of the workshop
are obliged to register for the main conference as well. Conference
registration details can be obtained via WWW from the ACL/EACL-97 home
page http://horacio.ieec.uned.es:80/cl97/
17th of March 1997:
Deadline for receipt of submissions
4th of April 1997:
Notification of acceptance/rejection
1st of May 1997:
Final versions due for proceedings
12th July 1997:
1-Day Workshop
-- FIFTH MEETING ON THE MATHEMATICS OF LANGUAGE (MOL5) Call for
Papers. NOTE NEW MOL WEBPAGE:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ircs/mol/mol.html
Sponsored by the Association for the Mathematics of Language
(a special interest group of the Association for Computational
Linguistics). DATES: 25-27 August 1997. LOCATION: Schloss Dagstuhl,
Saarbruecken, Germany. SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 28, 1997.
SUBMISSION ADDRESS: djohns@watson.ibm.com. Submissions are invited
from all areas of study that deal with the mathematical properties of
natural language. These areas include, but are not limited to,
mathematical models of syntax, semantics and phonology; computational
complexity of linguistic frameworks/theories and models of natural
language processing; mathematical theories of language learning;
parsing theory; and quantitative models of language. If the co-chairs
feel the area of a submitted paper cannot be adequately reviewed by
the program committee, an attempt will be made to get outside reviews.
All contributions to MOL5 are to be made electronically as either an
unformatted (plain text) ASCII file or LaTex file. Authors are
responsible for their submissions printing without special actions by
the program committee. Submissions should consist of an abstract of
original, previously unpublished work. Abstract length should be no
more than five (5) pages. No unrefereed proceedings are planned. It
is anticipated that selected papers will be published after peer
review as a special issue or collection.
-\-/-\ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS \-/-\-
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-- SUMMER INTERNSHIPS at Sun Microsystems Laboratories (Chelmsford,
MA). Sun Microsystems Laboratories (Chelmsford, Massachusetts, 25
minutes from Boston) is seeking students to fill summer internships
within the Conceptual Indexing project, a research project that
focuses on the use of natural language processing and knowledge
representation techniques to improve information access. We are
seeking individuals to contribute to the development of technologies
for intelligent document analysis as well as to the design and
implemention of a prototype for an information service which helps
bridge people through shared interests. Much of the software will be
written in Java with some external extensions to C and C++ systems.
The position requires object-oriented development experience
(non-classroom experience perferred), good design practices and
principles, and the ability to learn quickly and interact well within
a project group. The candidates will be expected to participate in
ongoing design discussions and take responsibility for the completion
of well-defined modules within the proposed system. A strong interest
in one of the following areas is required: natural language
processing, knowledge representation, information retrieval,
user-interface design and the World Wide Web. A candidate should be
able to demonstrate strong creativity as well as a good intuition for
software design. Position is open to graduate students as well as
exceptional undergraduates.Information about the Conceptual Indexing
project can be found at:
http://www.sunlabs.com/research/knowledge
Interested? As soon as possible, contact:
Cookie Callahan
Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc.
Two Elizabeth Drive
Chelmsford MA 01824-4195 USA
Email: cookie.callahan@east.sun.com
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\-/-\
-\-/-\ CONSERVE DISK SPACE \-/-\-
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