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Newsletter Apr. 11, No. 24
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Subject: Newsletter Apr. 11, No. 24
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From: csli@csli.stanford.edu
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Date: Wed 10 Apr 1985 17:26:31-PST
C S L I N E W S L E T T E R
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April 11, 1985 Stanford Vol. 2, No. 24
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A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
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CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *THIS* THURSDAY, April 11, 1985
12 noon TINLunch
Ventura Hall ``Semantics for Natural Language: Metaphysics
Conference Room for the Simple-minded?''
Chris Menzel, CSLI
2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar
Redwood Hall ``What if the World Were Really Quite Simple?''
Room G-19 Alex Pentland, CSLI
Discussion led by Jerry Hobbs, SRI International
3:30 p.m. Tea
Ventura Hall
4:15 p.m. CSLI Colloquium
Redwood Hall ``A Formal Theory of Innate Linguistic Knowledge''
Room G-19 Janet Dean Fodor, University of Connecticut and CSLI
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CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR *NEXT* THURSDAY, April 18, 1985
12 noon TINLunch
Ventura Hall A. P. Martinich's ``A Theory for Metaphor''
Conference Room Discussion led by Paul Schacht
(Abstract on page 2)
2:15 p.m. CSLI Seminar
Redwood Hall Title to be announced
Room G-19 Brian Smith, Xerox PARC and CSLI
Discussion led by Stan Rosenschein
3:30 p.m. Tea
Ventura Hall
4:15 p.m. CSLI Colloquium
Redwood Hall ``Two Examiners Marked Six Papers: Interpretations
Room G-19 of Numerically Quantified Sentences''
Martin Davies, Birkbeck College, U. of London
NEW DIRECTOR
Jon Barwise, CSLI's first Director, stepped down on April 1 in
order to devote more time to research. John Perry, the newly endowed
Henry Waldgrave Stuart professor of philosophy at Stanford, succeeds
him.
Page 2 CSLI Newsletter April 11, 1985
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ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S TINLUNCH
Much work has been done on the concept of metaphor, but most of
this work does not place metaphor within a general theory of language
or language use. So argues A. P. Martinich in his article ``A Theory
for Metaphor.'' Martinich attempts to explain metaphor in terms of
Grice's theory of conversation, maintaining that metaphor is
pragmatically rather than semantically based and that, while ``there
is a sense in which the sentence used metaphorically has a
metaphorical meaning, this meaning is itself a consequence of the
mechanisms that give rise to the metaphor and are not what makes the
metaphor possible.'' We will use Martinich's assertions as a point of
departure-- as it were--for a general discussion of metaphor.
____________ --Paul Schacht
ABSTRACT OF NEXT WEEK'S COLLOQUIUM
``Two Examiners Marked Six Papers''
Interpretations of numerically quantified sentences
Numerically quantified sentences, such as
(1) Two examiners marked six scripts
admit of several different readings. In ``Ambiguity and Quantification'',
Ruth Kempson and Annabel Cormack proposed four interpretations to be
derived from a ``single semantic representation''. I begin with a brief
exposition of their proposal, and raise several questions about it.
My main aim is to present an alternative semantic proposal. After
a brief glance at the distributive reading of sentences with just one
numerical quantifier, I move to the group or collective reading. Here
I rely on work by Barry Taylor on articulated predication. This is
related to Adam Morton's multigrade relations, and Richard Grandy's
anadic logic.
Iterated deployment of the semantic resources used for the
distributive and collective readings of very simple sentences
provides, in principle, for eight readings of a sentence like (1).
But some of the readings turn out to be equivalent, and the pattern of
equivalences varies with different choices of binary predicate in
place of ``marked''. After comparison of these readings with those
proposed by Kempson and Cormack, a branching quantifier representation
is proposed for the so-called complete group interpretation. I
conclude with some reflections on the questions raised at the outset.
____________ --Martin Davies
LOGIC SEMINAR
``On the Model Theory of Shared Information''
Jon Barwise, CSLI
April 16, at 4:15, Room 381 T (Math Corner)
The traditional model-theoretic approach to the problem of shared
understanding (public information, common knowledge, mutual belief)
has been through an iterated hierarchy of attitude reports (c knows
that b knows ... that c knows that P), mirroring the iterated
hierarchy in set theory and higher-order model theory. In this talk I
want to show that Aczel's work on non-wellfounded sets gives us a new
tool for a ``direct'' model-theoretic approach through situations. I
will go on to state some approximation theorems that show to what
extent the hierarchy approach does and does not add up, in the limit,
to the direct approach. The results raise a number of interesting
model-theoretic questions that only arise in the context of
non-wellfounded sets.
Page 3 CSLI Newsletter April 11, 1985
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PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT SEMINAR
``Morphological & Prosodic Cues in the Learning
of a Miniature Phrase-Structure Language''
Richard Meier, Stanford
April 12, 3:15pm, Jordan Hall, Rm. 100
I will claim that the input to language learning is a grouped and
structured sequence of words and that learning operates most
successfully on such structures, and not on mere word strings. After
briefly reviewing evidence for such groupings in natural language,
this claim will be supported by three experiments in artificial
language learning. These experiments allow rigorous control of the
input to the learner. Prior work had argued that, in such
experiments, adult subjects can learn complex syntactic rules only
with extensive semantic mediation. In the current experiments,
subjects fully learned complex aspects of syntax if they viewed, or
heard, sentences (paired with an uninformative semantics) containing
one of three grouping cues for constituent structure: prosody,
function words, or agreement suffixes on the words within a
constituent. Absent such cues, subjects learned only limited aspects
of syntax. These results suggest that, in natural languages, such
grouping cues may subserve syntax learning.
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CSLI SEMINAR
``Tacit Knowledge: Subdoxasticity and Modularity''
Martin Davies, Birkbeck College, London
10:15, Tuesday, April 16, Ventura Seminar Room
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CONFERENCE ON EVOLUTION AND INFORMATION
A conference on Evolution and Information with major support from
CSLI will be held at Stanford this April 19-21. The specific focus of
the conference will be on the use of optimality models both in biology
and in the human sciences. Papers will be contributed to the
conference by biologists, philosophers, psychologists, and
anthropologists. Apart from addressing problems and limitations of
optimality models within biology, an important aim of the conference
will be to explore the relevance of biological results, either
factually or methodologically, to other areas of inquiry.
Contributors will be asked to give a brief summary of their papers
at the conference sessions but papers will not be read. For further
information about the conference contact John Dupre, Philosophy,
Stanford University (415-497-2587, Dupre@Turing).
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PHILOSOPHY COURSE
The seminar ``Nonexistent Objects and the Semantics of Fiction''
will now be meeting regularly on Tuesdays from 12:30 - 2:15 in the
Ventura Trailers Conference Room. The course, though listed in the
Philosophy Department, will satisfy requirements for the formal
systems major. --Ed Zalta
Page 4 CSLI Newsletter April 11, 1985
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WORKSHOP ON FINITE STATE MORPHOLOGY
CSLI, Stanford July 29-30, 1985
In the area of syntax there has been for a long time a connection
between linguistics and computer science. Mathematical and
computational issues are often raised in connection with certain kinds
of syntactic problems. Some concepts, such as unification, that have
their origins in computer science have been added to the linguistic
vocabulary as a result of this interaction.
In phonology and morphology, the situation has so far been
different. In this domain, descriptive and theoretical work for the
most part has proceeded without parallel mathematical and
computational effort. It appears that this situation is about to
change. There is a great deal of new activity in computational
morphology that stems from yet unpublished work by Martin Kay and
Ronald Kaplan on implementing phonological rules as finite state
transducers. Because the use of finite state devices is the central
idea that characterizes this approach, it seems appropriate to talk
about FINITE STATE MORPHOLOGY. One major piece of work in this line
of research is Kimmo Koskenniemi's recent dissertation on Two-level
Morphology. There are many features in current phonology that are
missing from implementations of Finite State Morphology that have been
built so far. It has not been shown that all relevant phenomena can
be handled in a satisfactory way by finite state means.
Given this state of affairs, the stage is set for useful exchanges
between theoretical and descriptive phonologists, computer scientists,
and linguists who are working on computational morphology. We are
planning a workshop on Finite State Morphology in Palo Alto under the
auspices of CSLI. The dates for the workshop are July 29-30. Among
the topics that we expect to discuss are the following:
- Points of friction between Finite State approaches to phonology
and linguistic theory; phenomena that present fundamental problems.
- New ideas within this framework.
- Descriptive work on particular languages.
- Representation of rules as transducers, compilation.
- Mathematical properties of rule systems. Send comments and
inquiries to Lauri Karttunen (LAURI@SU-CSLI.ARPA).
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PANEL DISCUSSION ON SYNTACTIC THEORIES
1:30, Tuesday, April 16, Redwood G-19
The lecturers in our series on syntactic theories for non-linguists
are back, this time in a panel discussion. Joan Bresnan, Geoff
Pullum, and Peter Sells will take questions from the audience (no
initial presentations, so come with questions). This time, linguists
ARE allowed, but they are asked to stick to matters that non-linguists
will have a chance of understanding. If you think of questions in
advance, send them to the panelists so that they can think about them
(BRESNAN@SU-CSLI,PULLUM@SU-CSLI,SELLS@SU-CSLI).
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