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CSLI Calendar, 17 November 1994, vol.10:8
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To: friends
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Subject: CSLI Calendar, 17 November 1994, vol.10:8
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From: Tom Burke <burke>
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Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 13:03:17 -0800
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
______________________________________________________________________________
17 November 1994 Stanford Vol. 10, No. 8
______________________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the Center for the Study of Language and
Information (CSLI), Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
____________
CSLI ACTIVITIES DURING 17 NOVEMBER -- 2 DECEMBER 1994
THURSDAY, 17 NOVEMBER
10:00 - STASS Seminar
Cordura Hall, Upstairs Commons Area
An Introduction to Situation Theory
Keith Devlin, Saint Mary's College Mathematics
Abstract below
2:15 - CSLI Seminar
POSTPONED DUE TO SCHEDULING CONFLICT
Graphical Theorem Proving: An Approach to Reasoning
with the Help of Diagrams
David Barker-Plummer, CSLI
4:15 - SSP Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
Genetic Programming: Programming Computers By Means
of Natural Selection
John Koza, Stanford Computer Science
Abstract below
7:30 - Berkeley/Stanford Phonology Workshop
2111 California Street, Berkeley
A Declarative Theory of Phonology-Morphology Interleaving
Cemil Orhan Orgun, UC Berkeley Linguistics
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 18 NOVEMBER
12:00 - Logic Lunch
Building 380, Room 383-N
A Theory of Rules for Enumerated Classes of Functions
Andreas Schlueter, Stanford visiting scholar
Abstract below
12:30 - HCI Seminar
McCullough Building, Room 134
Designing for Mathematical Understanding
Rogers Hall, UC Berkeley Education and IRL
Abstract below
3:15 - Philosophy Colloquium
Building 90, Room 91-A
Our Entitlement to Self-knowledge
Tyler Burge, UCLA Philosophy
3:30 - Linguistics Colloquium
Building 460, Room 146
On Maori `he' and the Uses of Indefinites
Sandy Chung, UC Santa Cruz Linguistics
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 24 NOVEMBER
Thanksgiving Recess
Classes and CSLI Activities resume Monday 28 November
THURSDAY, 1 DECEMBER
10:00 - STASS Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Title and speaker to be announced
2:15 - CSLI Seminar
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Demarcating the Bald: A Solution to the Heap Paradox
Ruth Manor, Tel-Aviv and San Jose State Philosophy
Abstract below
4:15 - Symbolic Systems Forum
Building 60, Room 61-F
KEN -- Real World Face Recognition Technology
Martin Lades, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7:30 - Stanford/Berkeley Phonology Workshop
Building 460, Seminar Room 146
Anchors Away: A Unified Treatment of Ghost Segments and
Floating Features
Cheryl Zoll, UC Berkeley Linguistics
FRIDAY, 2 DECEMBER
12:30 - HCI Seminar
McCullough Building, Room 134
An Academic Discovers the Realities of Design
Donald Norman, Apple Computer
Abstract below
3:15 - Philosophy Colloquium
Building 90, Room 91-A
Resenting One's Own Existence
Bernard Williams, UC Berkeley Philosophy
____________
The CSLI Calendar appears on Thursday of each week throughout the academic
year. Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in the
Calendar on a given Thursday should be submitted by e-mail to
incalendar@csli.stanford.edu by 5:00 p.m. on the previous Tuesday.
Past issues of the CSLI Calendar, a quarterly schedule of upcoming CSLI
events, and other information about CSLI are available on the World Wide Web:
<http://csli-www.stanford.edu/>. The Calendar, with available abstracts, is
also posted each week to the csli.bboard newsgroup.
____________
STASS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 17 November
10:00 a.m., Cordura Hall, Upstairs Commons Area
An Introduction to Situation Theory
Keith Devlin
Saint Mary's College Mathematics
<devlin@csli.stanford.edu>
I will continue my introductory lectures on situation theory. Anyone wishing
to join the group should read the first few chapters of my book _Logic and
Information_ (1991). The first half of the seminar will be devoted to a
discussion of work in progress, that tries to develop a framework that extends
the original ideas of situation theory to incorporate insights from speech
acts theory and conversation analysis. The second half will have more of a
"lecture" format, and will consist of a continuation of my presentation of
"classical" situation theory and situation semantics. I will provide links
between the two halves of the seminar whenever possible.
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 17 November
4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
Genetic Programming: Programming Computers
By Means of Natural Selection
John Koza
Stanford Computer Science
<koza@cs.stanford.edu>
Genetic algorithms are useful in solving many problems, including optimization
problems in non-linear multi-dimensional spaces.
Genetic programming extends the genetic algorithm to the domain of computer
programs. In genetic programming, populations of program are genetically bred
to solve problems. Genetic programming can solve problems of system
identification, classification, control, robotics, optimization, game-playing,
and pattern recognition. Starting with a primordial ooze of hundreds or
thousands of randomly created programs composed of functions and terminals
appropriate to the problem, the population is progressively evolved over a
series of generations by applying the operations of Darwinian fitness
proportionate reproduction and crossover (sexual recombination).
Many problem environments have regularities, symmetries, and homogeneities
that can be exploited in solving the problem. Automatic function definition
provides a way to dynamically decompose a problem into simpler subproblems,
solve the subproblems, and assemble the solutions to the subproblems into an
overall solution of the original problem. Experimental evidence suggests that
automatic function definition reduces the computation effort needed to solve a
problem and produces a simpler and more understandable overall solution.
JOHN R. KOZA is consulting professor in the computer science department at
Stanford University. He is author of the 1992 book Genetic Programming: On
the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection from the MIT Press
and the 1994 book Genetic Programming II: Automatic Discovery of Reusable
Programs covering the subject of automatic function definition in the context
of genetic programming.
____________
BERKELEY/STANFORD PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP
on Thursday, 17 November
7:30 p.m., 2111 California Street, Berkeley
A Declarative Theory of Phonology-Morphology Interleaving
Cemil Orhan Orgun
UC Berkeley Linguistics
<orgun@cogsci.berkeley.edu>
This talk presents Monotonic Cyclicity, a declarative theory of phonology-
morphology interleaving. Contrary to past conviction (e.g., Bird 1990, Scobbie
1991, Lakoff 1993, Karttunen 1993), cyclicity is consistent with a declarative
approach to grammar. I propose a sign-based approach to the
phonology-morphology interaction in which every node in a constituent
structure has phonological (as well as syntactic, semantic, etc.) attributes.
The phonological string of a mother node is related to its immediate
constituents by a set of constraints. Appropriate types of constraints for
this purpose include generalized correspondence constraints (McCarthy and
Prince 1994). This constraint-based conception makes it clear that there is
nothing inherently serial about interleaving. The phonological constraints are
simply part of the local tree licensing conditions of a context free
tree-accepting grammar. Interleaving is thus not a stipulation or an
additional "device", but rather a consequence of adopting a constituent-based
approach to linguistic structure (a foundational assumption in most modern
linguistic theories).
Advantages of this approach include the following:
1. Cyclic as well as noncyclic effects are derived from constituent
structure.
2. Bracket erasure effects are an automatic consequence (Orgun 1993).
3. Morphological junctures are not encoded within phonological strings.
Approaches in which the output is divisible into morphemes must assign
unmotivated morpheme membership to derived phonological structures. In
Monotonic Cyclicity, only underlying material belongs to morphemes.
The talk will take place at the home of Sharon Inkelas and Orhan Orgun, in
Berkeley. The address: 2111 California Street. Phone: (510) 649-1470.
Directions: from University Avenue (exit from I-80), turn south on California
(which is between Sacramento and MLK Blvd). Cross Addison and park anywhere.
2111 is in the block of condos, upstairs, near the main entrance to the
complex.
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 18 November
12:00 noon, Building 380, Room 383-N
A Theory of Rules for Enumerated Classes of Functions
Andreas Schlueter
Stanford visiting scholar
We define an applicative theory CL_2 similar to combinatory logic which can be
interpreted in classes of functions possessing an enumerating function. In
contrast to the models of classical combinatory logic, it is not necessarily
assumed that the enumerating function itself belongs to that function class.
Thereby we get a variety of possible models including, e.g., the classes of
primitive recursive, recursive, elementary or polynomial-time computable
functions.
We show that in CL_2 a major part of the metatheory of enumerated classes of
functions can be developed. Namely, a kind of Lambda-abstraction can be
defined and abstract versions of the S-m-n- and (primitive) recursion theorems
are proved.
Finally it is shown that the proof-theoretical strength of various theories
for explicit mathematics is preserved when replacing the applicative part of
the theories by our theory together with an operation for primitive recursion.
____________
SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
on Friday, 18 November
12:30 p.m., McCullough Building, Room 134
Designing for Mathematical Understanding
Rogers Hall
UC Berkeley Education and IRL
<rhall@garnet.berkeley.edu>
By some accounts there is a crisis in traditional mathematics instruction.
For example, the half life of the US study body in mathematics after the
eighth grade is currently estimated at about one year. In response, there are
a variety of efforts underway to reorganize the learning and teaching of
mathematics, along both conceptual and technical lines.
I will talk about ongoing work in an NSF-sponsored curriculum development
project for middle school mathematics. Our design goal has been to extend the
usual sense of an "applied" mathematics problem into a series of longer-term
(4 to 10 weeks), broadly accessible, and computer-supported "design projects"
for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. We are currently field testing a set
of curriculum units that borrow problem contexts from fields as diverse as
architectural design and population ecology.
The talk follows two comparisons. First, I contrast student work from field
studies conducted early and late in our curriculum development process.
Decisions made over the course of developing each unit reflect the views of
very different design participants: educational researchers, interface
designers, teaching professionals, school children, and cognitive scientists.
What results (we hope) is curriculum materials that support alternative and
more authentic forms of mathematical work in school settings.
Second, on the question of what authentic mathematical work might be, I
contrast the problem-solving activities of middle school students with those
of adult professionals in design-oriented work places. Since school
mathematics is usually intended to have some relation to adult mathematical
practices, we can examine activity in these settings to determine what form
that relation might take. Field work in adult sites is drawn from a summer
practicum program for teachers that, in the words of one participant, helps to
"break the edges off" of traditional views of mathematics.
ROGERS HALL is an Assistant Professor in the Division for Education in
Mathematics, Science, and Technology at the University of California at
Berkeley. He also works as a research scientist at the Institute for Research
on Learning. His graduate training is in psychology and computer science, and
his research focuses on the development of discipline-specific
representational practices in and out of school. He is not (yet) a www
entity.
____________
PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 18 November
3:15 p.m., Building 90, Room 91-A
Our Entitlement to Self-knowledge
Tyler Burge
UCLA Philosophy
____________
LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 18 November
3:30 p.m., Building 460, Room 146
On Maori `he' and the Uses of Indefinites
Sandy Chung
UC Santa Cruz Linguistics
<chung@ling.ucsc.edu>
At the heart of the Kamp/Heim theory of indefinites is the claim that
indefinites are not inherently quantificational, but instead acquire their
quantificational force from the larger structures in which they happen to
occur. In this theory, the existential force of indefinites that lie within
the nuclear scope of an operator, or within the scope of no operator at all,
is attributed to one or more processes of default existential closure.
Heim (1982) explores two different routes for achieving this existential
closure: a structural route, in which an existential quantifier is adjoined to
the relevant domains in Logical Form (Chapter 2), and an interpretive route,
in which the existential reading falls out from the satisfaction conditions
that constrain the building of files in file-change semantics (Chapter 3).
Though Heim ultimately opts for the interpretive route, she observes that the
choice is rather weakly motivated.
In this talk I discuss some Maori facts which seem to offer further evidence
for an interpretive over an LF approach to existential closure. Indefinite
DP's in Maori are headed by one of two determiners, `tetahi' (pl. `etahi') or
`he'. The distribution of `tetahi' is roughly equivalent to English `a'; the
distribution of `he' is known to be severely restricted. Drawing on recent
work by Chung, Mason, and Milroy, I show that the occurrence of `he' is
constrained by three conditions, one restricting its morphosyntactic
distribution; another, its role in discourse structure; and the third -- I
claim -- the structural configurations in which it can occur in Logical Form.
The statement of the third condition, I contend, requires us to assume that
default existential closure is not structurally implemented in Logical Form,
but rather occurs subsequently, in the interpretation.
____________
STASS SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 December
10:00 a.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Title and speaker to be announced
____________
CSLI SEMINAR
on Thursday, 1 December
2:15 p.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
Demarcating the Bald: A Solution to the Heap Paradox
Ruth Manor
Tel-Aviv and San Jose State Philosophy
<manor@sparta.sjsu.edu>
I am interested in a general theory of vagueness, but the present paper is
concerned with the Heap Paradox, which argues inductively that all men are
bald since adding one hair to a bald man will not render him non-bald. The
suggested solution is based on vagueness as a useful feature of natural
language (rather than a mere failure to speak precisely) involving context
sensitivity. Predicates can be used to identify new objects of the discourse.
Vague predicates identify foggy objects whose boundaries are indeterminate.
This indeterminacy of borderlines amounts to lack of sufficient reason for one
among several good and mutually exclusive alternatives to demarcate the
object. In some contexts the inductive step of the paradoxical argument is
false, the boundary of the bald is determined at a particular hairnumber, and
the paradoxical argument is unsound. In those contexts in which the boundary
of the bald is indeterminate, the inductive argument is sound but its
conclusion is not inconsistent with the claim that some men are non-bald.
____________
SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 1 December
4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
KEN -- Real World Face Recognition Technology
Martin Lades
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
____________
BERKELEY/STANFORD PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP
on Thursday, 1 December
7:30 p.m., Building 460, Seminar Room 146
Anchors Away: A Unified Treatment of Ghost Segments
and Floating Features
Cheryl Zoll
UC Berkeley Linguistics
<zoll@garnet.berkeley.edu>
This paper investigates whether the current understanding of segmental
representation adequately characterizes the full range of subsegmental
phemomena found cross-linguistically. The research focuses particularly on
phonological units which are invisible to parsing in certain contexts such as
floating features and latent segments, and demonstrates that the
representational distinctions now advocated between different types of
subsegmental phenomena yield a false typlogy, predicting contrasts which do
not exist while failing to provide a satisfactory account for well-attested
phenomena. I propose instead a constraint-based grammar in the framework of
Optimality Theory that derives the variety of surface phenomena from a single
underlying representation. This approach reveals important generalizations
masked by a purely representational account, in particular the role of segment
structure constraints in determining the surfaceJrealization of subsegments.
The typology which results from this analysis correctly classifies the entire
range of behavior associated with subminimal phonological units, while
allowing a unique characterization of the immunity of defective segments from
the demands of regular parsing.
____________
SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
on Friday, 2 December
12:30 p.m., McCullough Building, Room 134
An Academic Discovers the Realities of Design
Donald Norman
Apple Computer
<dnorman@apple.com>
We are indeed in the midst of a most interesting technological revolution, one
which joins communication, computation, and entertainment. Things are moving
rapidly, and in another century, the way we live our lives will have been
transformed rather dramatically, perhaps equivalent to the past one hundred
years in which my parents, for example, started in a world where horses were
the main transportation, the telephone was not in widespread use, and people
rarely traveled more than a few miles from their homes during their entire
lives.
Today, in HCI courses around the world, we worry about the details of today's
technology. We have lofty theories, lofty ideas. But what is the relationship
between the ideals of the world of academics and of design and the world of
industry? Hmm. Why do you think there should be any relationship?
The world of industry is driven by the business model: what sells. Indeed, my
current standard talk to conferences is entitled: "Trends in the Computer
Industry: Life-Long Subscriptions, Magical Cures, and the Search for Profits
Along the Information Highway".
So in this talk, let me tread a dangerous walk along the boundary between hope
and despair. On one hand, I will argue that artifacts of technology can
indeed make us smart, that we are in the midst of most interesting times. On
the other hand, I will also argue that those in power are primarily driven by
their perception of the marketplace, so that if we are not careful, Hollywood
standards will dominate the information industry -- low standards in culture,
low standards in content, high standards in glitter, and a price for
everything.
Is there a positive side to this? Yes. But it will require consierable
change, including reorganizing how companies develop product. The theory of
HCI is the easy part: restructuring the industry so that our dreams can
actually occur is the hard part.
DONALD A. NORMAN is an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer and Professor Emeritus
at the University of California, San Diego where he was founding chair of the
department of Cognitive Science. He was one of the founders of the Cognitive
Science Society and has been chair of the society and editor of its journal,
Cognitive Science. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.
"The technological problems today," says Norman, "are sociological and
organizational as much as technical. In this new age of portable, powerful,
fully-communicating tools, it is ever more important to develop a humane
technology, one that takes into account the needs and capabilities of people."
Norman is the author of the book "The Design of Everyday Things." His most
recent books are "Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles" and
"Things That Make Us Smart." All three books are now available on a Voyager
CD-ROM -- Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine -- complete
with video talks, demonstrations, collected papers, and even examinations.
____________
PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 2 December
3:15 p.m., Building 90, Room 91-A
Resenting One's Own Existence
Bernard Williams
UC Berkeley Philosophy
____________