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Newsletter August 8, No. 40



                      C S L I   N E W S L E T T E R
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August 8, 1985                  Stanford                       Vol. 2, No. 40
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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 *NEXT* THURSDAY, August 15, 1985

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       No Lunch this week
     Conference Room    
		
   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Talk
     Ventura Hall	``Relevant Arithmetic and Automatic Theorem Proving''
     Conference Room	Bob Meyer, Australian National University
			(Abstract next week)

   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall		
                              ____________
                              ANNOUNCEMENT

                     No activities take place today.
                              ____________
                                CSLI TALK
                         On Situation Semantics
                  Robin Cooper, University of Wisconsin
               Ventura Conference Room, August 14, 2 p.m.
                              ____________
            INTERACTIONS OF MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX, AND DISCOURSE
              Summary of the meeting on Thursday, August 1

      Sells, Zaenen, and Zec continued their presentation on a typology
   of reflexive constructions, focussing on the interpretation assigned
   to structures containing reflexive pronouns.  In particular, they
   argued that the traditional conception of the ``bound variable'' vs.
   ``coreferential'' distinction is not fine-grained enough and
   introduced a third interpretation, called ``discourse binding''; this
   builds on the account of anaphora developed in Sells' paper
   ``Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Modification'' (CSLI Report No. 28).
   With regard to the interpretation of reflexive constructions,
   languages fall into two classes:

   --Those that only allow the bound variable interpretation.

   --Those that allow either the bound variable interpretation or the
   discourse binding interpretation.

      A notational system was presented for representing these
   interpretations, using the basics of Kamp's Discourse Representation
   Theory, and rules for constructing such representations from syntactic
   structures were discussed.
      Finally, some speculations were advanced as to the nature of the
   interpretations of other constructions involving reflexives, in
   particular the mediopassive and inchoative use of the `-yi-' reflexive
   in Kungparlang.					--Peter Sells

Page 2                     CSLI Newsletter                     August 8, 1985
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                     PIXELS AND PREDICATES: AREA P1
                        ``Diagram Understanding:
       The Intersection of Computer Graphics and Computer Vision''
       Fanya S. Montalvo, MIT, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
                   Summary of the meeting on August 7

      A problem common to computer vision and computer graphics was
   identified.  It deals with the representation, acquisition, and
   validation of symbolic descriptions for visual properties.  The
   utility of treating this area as one was explained in terms of
   providing the facility for diagrammatic conversations with systems.  I
   call this area ``diagram understanding'', which is analogous to
   natural language understanding.  The recognition and generation of
   visual objects are two sides of the same symbolic coin.  A paradigm
   for the discovery of higher-level visual properties was introduced,
   and its application to computer vision and computer graphics
   described.  The notion of denotation was introduced in this context.
   It is the map between linguistic symbols and visual properties.  A
   method was outlined for associating symbolic descriptions with visual
   properties in such a way that human subjects can be brought into the
   loop in order to validate (or specify) the denotation map.  Secondly,
   a way of discovering a natural set of visual primitives was
   introduced.					--Fanya Montalvo
                              ____________
                           SUMMARY OF NL2 TALK
           ``Some Null Subject Constructions in Modern Irish''
                Jim McCloskey, University College Dublin
                         Tuesday, July 23, 1:00

      The paper discusses a group of related constructions in Modern
   Irish which have two characteristics in common.  They have subjects
   which are phonologically null and which are pleonastic.  The paper is
   particularly concerned with the interaction between unaccusatives and
   a passive construction.
                              ____________
                             NEW CSLI REPORT

      Report No. CSLI-85-28, ``Restrictive and Non-restrictive
   Modification'' by Peter Sells, has just been published.  This report
   may be obtained by writing to David Brown, CSLI, Ventura Hall,
   Stanford, CA 94305 or Brown@su-csli.
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