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CSLI Calendar, March 24, 3:21


       C S L I   C A L E N D A R   O F   P U B L I C   E V E N T S
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24 March 1988                      Stanford                    Vol. 3, No. 21
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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 NEXT THURSDAY, 31 March 1988

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       Reading: "Learning at the Knowledge Level"
     Seminar Room  	by Tom Diettrich
			Discussion led by Kurt Konolige
			(konolige@bishop.ai.sri.com)
			Abstract in next week's Calendar

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     New building	Panel Discussion on Compositionality
     Conference Room	Per-Kristian Halvorsen (halvorsen.pa@xerox.com), 
			Stanley Peters (peters@russell.stanford.edu), and
   			Craige Roberts (croberts@csli.stanford.edu)
			Abstract below   			 
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     New building
     Courtyard			
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			      ANNOUNCEMENTS

   Don't forget our celebration of the new building on Thursday, March
   31.  Kurt Konolige will lead a TINLunch on "Learning at the Knowledge
   Level" by Tom Diettrich; and Stanley Peters, Kris Halvorsen, and Craige
   Roberts will give a mini-symposium on compositionality.  Beginning at
   3:30 we will have an extended tea complete with hors d'oeuvres,
   drinks, and a jazz band.

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			NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
		  Panel Discussion on Compositionality
       Per-Kristian Halvorsen, Stanley Peters, and Craige Roberts
				March 31

   Compositionality, conceived as a strong constraint on the relationship
   between sentential structures and interpretations, has been one of the
   central issues in semantic theory.  Since Montague's seminal work on
   this question, a number of analyses of specific interpretive problems
   have called into question whether we can maintain compositionality as
   a guiding principle in constructing semantic theories.  And some
   recent theories call into question in a more general way whether
   compositionality is the kind of constraint we want on semantic theory.
   These include theories which take seriously the contribution of
   contextual information to interpretation, including situation
   semantics and discourse representation theory, and also the recent
   work by Fenstad, Halvorsen, Langholm, and van Benthem exploring
   constraint-based interpretative theories operating on unification
   grammars.  In this panel discussion, we will briefly consider how
   compositionality has generally been understood in the semantic
   literature, give an overview of what we take to be the central
   problems that call its utility into question, and discuss some
   alternative conceptions of how semantic theory can be appropriately
   constrained.