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Newsletter, Nov. 1, No. 3


                       C S L I   N E W S L E T T E R
_________________________________________________________________________
November 1, 1984              Stanford                      Vol. 2, No. 3
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     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, NOVEMBER 1, 1984


12 noon                 TINLunch
  Ventura Hall          ``T. Parsons' Semantic Analysis of the Language
  Conference Room       of Stories.'' Discussion led by Ed Zalta.

2:15 p.m.               CSLI Seminar
  Redwood Hall          ``Report from Commonsense Summer''
  Room G--19            by Jerry R. Hobbs, AI Center, SRI and CSLI.
                        Discussant will be Johan de Kleer.

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.
                           ____________ 


                SCHEDULE FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1984

12 noon                 TINLunch
  Ventura Hall          ``Theories of Information''
  Conference Room       Discussion led by Stanley Peters
                        (Abstract on page 4)
				
2:15 p.m.               CSLI Seminar
  Redwood Hall          ``Speech Acts as Summaries of  Plans,''
  Auditorium            by Phil Cohen, SRI International.
                        Discussant will be Ivan Sag.
                        (Abstract on page 2)

3:30 p.m.               Tea
  Ventura Hall		

4:15 p.m.               CSLI Colloquium
  Redwood Hall          ``Emotions and their Objects'' by Ronald de Sousa,
  Room G-19             University of Toronto
                        (Abstract unavailable)
____________________________________________________________________________
     ************NOVEMBER 8--13 IS EMOTION WEEK AT CSLI************
                               (Details on page 3)
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Page 2                    CSLI Newsletter                  November 1, 1984
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                ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S  SEMINAR
            ``Speech Acts as Summaries of  Plans''

I will present a  formalism, being developed with Hector Levesque (Univ.
of Toronto), that shows how illocutionary acts can be defined in terms of
plans --- i.e., as beliefs about the conversants' shared knowledge of the
speaker's and hearer's goals and the causal consequences of achieving those
goals.  In this formalism, illocutionary acts are no longer conceptually
primitive, but rather amount to theorems that can be proven about a
state-of-affairs.  Thus, the definition of, say, a request is derived from
an independently-motivated theory of action, rather than stipulated.  The
general move of defining illocutionary acts in terms of plans may alleviate
a number of technical obstacles in applying speech act theory to discourse.
For example, it formally characterizes a range of indirect speech acts,
demonstrating how certain conventionalized forms can be derived from and
integrated with plan-based reasoning.  Other problems for speech act theory,
and their possible solution, will be discussed if there is time.

                                                        ---Phil Cohen
                           ____________ 

                SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR

Peter Sells of CSLI discussed problems of intensionality and scope in
relative clauses and proposed the beginnings of an account of them in terms
of Discourse Representation Structures, which it was claimed yield a more
satisfactory account than is available in Montague Grammar.  Edit Doron and
Lauri Karttunen were the discussants and pointed out several problem areas
in the analysis and directions for future research.
                           ____________ 

        SEMINAR IN LOGIC AND FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS

Speaker: Carolyn Talcott, Computer Science Department, Stanford.
Title:   The Essence of RUM: A theory of the intensional and extensional
         aspects of Lisp-type computation.
         (Part II - a continuation of last weeks talk)
Place:   Room 381-T, 1st floor Math. Corner.
Time:    Monday November 5, 4:15-5:30 p.m.
                           ____________ 
Page 3                  CSLI Newsletter                 November 1, 1984
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                EMOTION WEEK AT CSLI
                   November 8--13
				
Thursday, November 8  (CSLI Colloquium)
3:15--5:00  Redwood Hall
        ``Emotion:  Objects and Objectivity''
        Ronald de Sousa, University of Toronto.
        (Visiting University of British Columbia)

Friday, November 9.
2:00--3:30  Ventura Seminar Room
        ``The Role of Cognition in Emotion; Psychological Theories''
        Phoebe Ellsworth, Stanford University.

Monday, November 12.
2:00--3:30 Ventura Seminar Room
        ``A tear is an intellectual thing''
        Jerome Neu, University of California, Santa Cruz and
        Humanities Center, Stanford University.

Tuesday, November 13.
3:15--5:00 Ventura Seminar Room
        Topic to be announced.
        Ronald de Sousa.

Aside from the four scheduled talks, there will be a number of informal
discussion meetings:  dinner after the colloquium, and lunches.  These
additional meetings will be announced on November 8.

Talks and meetings are open to all who are interested.  If you have any
questions regarding the events of Emotion Week, contact Helen Nissenbaum,
phone: 497-9196 or 853-1040.  Computer address:  NISSENBAUM at SU-TURING.
Or leave messages with Suzi Parker at CSLI.
                           ____________ 

                AFRICANIST LINGUISTS ASSOCIATION MEETING

The Northern California Africanist Linguists Association will hold a
meeting on Friday, November 2, at 4:30 in the Ventura Conference Room.
All those interested in exchanging ideas and information about research
on African languages are invited to attend.  For further information,
call Catherine Demuth at 642-7090.
                           ____________ 

                 PHILOSOPHY DEPT COLLOQUIUM

Time:     Friday, October 26, 3:15 p.m.
Place:    Bldg 90, Room 92Q
Speaker:  David Pears, Oxford
Title:    ``Is There a Single Private Language Argument?''
                           ____________ 
Page 4                 CSLI Newsletter                  November 1, 1984
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                ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S TINLUNCH
                   ``Theories of Information''

CSLI's first year of research on language and computation has led many of
us to feel that developing a new theory of information will be a central
part of our future research.  The notion of information carried by an
utterance, a mental state, or a state of a computation appears fundamental
to the theories we are developing about language and computation.  Existing
information theories, such as Shannon and Weaver's, are not semantical in
character and do not capture the qualitative notion of information content.
They do, however, provide a notion of quantity of information.  Next
Thursday's TINLunch will be devoted to discussing what sort of theory or
theories of information CSLI should try to develop in light of the uses for
which they will be employed.
                                                        --Stanley Peters
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