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Newsletter, October 25, Vol. 2, No. 2

                       C S L I   N E W S L E T T E R
__________________________________________________________________________
October 18, 1984           Stanford                          Vol. 2, No.2
__________________________________________________________________________

         A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and 
	 Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
                           ____________ 

         CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *THIS* THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1984


12 noon                 TINLunch
  Ventura Hall          ``Linguistics and Psychology,'' by Scott Soames.
  Conference Room       Discussion led by David Israel.
				
2:15 p.m.               CSLI Seminar
  Redwood Hall          ``The Semantic Representation of Relative Clauses,
  Room G--19            Intensionality, and Scope.'' Discussion led by
                        Peter Sells. Discussants: Lauri Karttunen and Edit
                        Doron (Abstract of today's talk and account of
                        last week's seminar appear on page 2.)
                        The previously announced talk by Joseph Goguen
                        has been rescheduled for January.
   
3:30 p.m.               Tea
  Ventura Hall		

4:15 p.m.               CSLI Colloquium
  Redwood Hall          ``The Ordering and Scope of Operators in the
  Room G--19            Hungarian Sentence,'' by Katalin Kiss,
                        MIT/Sloan Postdoc.

                           ____________ 

                SCHEDULE FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1984

12 noon                 TINLunch
  Ventura Hall          ``T. Parsons' Semantic Analysis of the Language
  Conference Room       of Stories'' Discussion led by Ed Zalta.
                        (Abstract on page 3)
				
2:15 p.m.               CSLI Seminar
  Redwood Hall          ``Report from Commonsense Summer,'' by Jerry R. Hobbs,
  Auditorium            AI Center, SRI and CSLI.
                        Discussant will be Johan de Kleer.
                        (Abstract on page 3)

3:30 p.m.               Tea
  Ventura Hall		

4:15 p.m.               CSLI Colloquium
  Redwood Hall          ``Autolexical Syntax,'' by  Jerrold G. Sadock,
  Room G-19             University of Chicago/CASBS.
                        (Abstract on page 2)
Page 2                  CSLI Newsletter                    October 25, 1984
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                ABSTRACT OF THIS WEEK'S SEMINAR
                         
I will present a part of my dissertation, ``Syntax and Semantics of
Resumptive Pronouns,'' that deals with the semantics of relative clauses.
Montague's treatment of intensionality runs into problems with the kinds
of intensional examples I will discuss, which are of the form ``the unicorn
that John seeks (should be 5 years old).''  This kind of example, I will
argue, does indeed have an intensional reading, one that Montague's
treatment cannot get.  Another kind of example with a quantifier is
something like ``the grade that every student gets (is determined solely
by the final exam),'' where intuitively ``every student'' gets widest scope.
This is problematic in that relative clauses are normally scope islands.
I will propose an analysis of these data in the framework of Discourse
Representation Structures as developed by Hans Kamp and use data from
English and Hebrew to support the particular theoretical assumptions.
                                                        --Peter Sells
                           ____________ 

                SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR

Brian Smith of Xerox PARC led last week's research seminar in a
discussion of abstract data types and the representational theory of
mind. Smith pointed  out  similarities between abstract data types and
recent, less explicitly representational models of computation, as well
as certain differences in their ``semantics.''  He suggested that the
common direction is a representational, but non-syntactic, model of
computation and/or mind.   Jon Barwise was the discussant.
                           ____________ 

                ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S COLLOQUIUM
                      ``Autolexical Syntax''

Challenges to the strictest version of the Lexicalist Hypothesis are posed
by several kinds of natural language phenomena, principal among these being
cliticization, noun incorporation, the existence of portmanteau words, and
synthetic compounds.  I will show that only one assumption concerning the
boundary between syntax and morphology needs to be changed in order to
handle all of the problematic kinds of examples mentioned above.  I will
discuss what seem to be the major universal features of this morpho-
syntactic interface grammar and show how the model applies in diverse
languages.  (Unabridged version of this abstract is available at the
receptionist's desk.)
                                                --Jerrold M. Sadock
                           ____________ 

                        NEW CSLI REPORT

Report No. 16, ``The Center for the Study of Language and Information,'' has
just been published. It describes the Center and its research programs. An
online copy of this report can be found in the <CSLI> directory in the file
``Report-No-16.Online.'' In addition to this report, the <CSLI> directory
contains other valuable information about the Center and Turing.  To obtain
a printed version of Report No. 16, write to Dikran Karagueuzian, CSLI,
Ventura Hall, Stanford 94305 or send net mail to Dikran at Turing.
Page 3                  CSLI Newsletter                    October 25, 1984
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                ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S  SEMINAR
               ``Report from Commonsense Summer''

``Commonsense Summer'' was a summer-long workshop sponsored by CSLI and held
at SRI International.  It has long been agreed that intelligent behavior
requires a great deal of knowledge about the commonsense world, but before
this year no one had embarked on a large-scale effort to encode this
knowledge.  The aim of Commonsense Summer was to do the first three months
of such an effort.  Eight graduate students from several universities
participated in the workshop full-time, and a number of other active
researchers in the fields of knowledge representation, natural language and
vision participated as well. An attempt was made to axiomatize in formal
logic significant amounts of commonsense knowledge about the physical,
psychological and social worlds, concentrating on eight domains: spatial
relationships, shape, motion, properties of materials, belief states,
certain speech acts, relations between textual entities and entities in the
world, and responsibility.  In this talk I will discuss the problem of
encoding commonsense knowledge in general, outline the approach taken in the
workshop, and describe some of the results of the summer.    --Jerry R. Hobbs
                           ____________ 

                ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S TINLUNCH
      ``T. Parsons' Semantic Analysis of the Language of Stories''

In T. Parsons' book, Nonexistent Objects, we find a new paradigm for the
semantic investigation of the language of stories. It is not only capable
of preserving the results of previous paradigms without exhibiting any of
their characteristics, which Barwise and Perry have found objectionable (for
example, sentences do not denote truth values, nor are worlds taken as prim-
itives to reconstruct relations and propositions), but it is also capable of
preserving our intuitions about the logical form of sentences found in
stories.  In this lunchtime discussion, I would like to explore Parsons'
views concerning why it is that people react strongly against the ``non-
existent'' objects he posits to analyze the language of stories.   --Ed Zalta
                           ____________ 
			COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT

Following is a brief description of a course entitled ``Form and Meaning
of English Intonation.'' to be taught by Mark Liberman and Janet
Pierrehumbert of AT&T Bell Laboratories from Monday, November 5 to Saturday,
November 17.  The course is sponsored by the Linguistics Department and
CSLI. The classes will be held in the Seminar Room in Ventura Hall. For more
details, contact Bill Poser (Poser at SU-CSLI).
  Participants will learn to describe and interpret the stress, tune and
  phrasing of English utterances, using a set of systematically arranged
  examples, given in the form of transcripts, tapes and pitch contours.  The
  class will also make use of an interactive real-time pitch detection and
  display device. We will provide a theory of English intonation patterns and
  their phonetic interpretation, in the form of an algorithm for generating
  synthetic F0 contours from underlying phonological representations. We will
  investigate the relation of these patterns to the form, meaning and use of
  the spoken sentences that bear them, paying special attention to
  intonational focus and intonational phrasing. Problem sets will develop or
  polish participants' skills in the exploration of experimental results and
  the design of experiments.
Page 4                  CSLI Newsletter                    October 25, 1984
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                           NL-1 MEETING

Lauri Carlson will talk about ``The Semantics of Focus'' in the Seminar Room
in Ventura Hall, Friday, October 26 at 2 p.m.  Anyone wishing to receive
information on a regular basis on Natural Language meetings should send net
mail to ``Requests'' at Turing.
                           ____________ 

                        AREA-C MEETINGS

The  Area-C group meets every Wednesday from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.  in the
Seminar Room in Ventura Hall to discuss various topics related to its area.
Activities in these weekly meetings include presentations by guest speakers
as well as by members of the group and  workshops on topics of particular
interest. Interested memebers of the CSLI community are welcome to attend
Area-C meetings, which are announced via a special mailing list, CINTEREST.
If you wish to have your name placed on this mailing list, please send a
message to ``Requests'' at Turing.
  Area C is divided into three projects:
     C--1. Semantics of Computation, project manager Joseph Goguen.
     C--2. Computer Languages, project manager Terry Winograd.
     C--3. Architectures for Reasoning, project manager Brian Smith.
                           ____________ 


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