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CSLI Calendar, 09 May 1996, vol.11:26




   
         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
______________________________________________________________________________

9 May 1996                      Stanford                       Vol. 11, No. 26
______________________________________________________________________________

      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 9 MAY -- 17 MAY 1996


  THURSDAY, 9 MAY
        10:00 - STASS Seminar
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                Second-Order Logic and Plural Noun Phrases (Part 2)
                Jan Tore Loenning, University of Oslo Linguistics
                Abstract below (May 2)

        12:00 - CSLI CogLunch
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                Unappraised Affect
                Bob Zajonc, Stanford Psychology 

         3:30 - Linguistics Department Colloquium
                Building 460, Room 146
                Similarity and phonotactics
                Janet Pierrehumbert, Northwestern Linguistics 
                Abstract below

         4:15 - SSP Faculty/Student Mixer
                Building 60, Room 61-F
                Abstract below

  FRIDAY, 10 MAY
        12:00 - Logic Lunch
                Building 380, Room 383-N 
                An Effective Proof that Open Sets are Ramsey 
                Jeremy Avigad 
                Abstract below

        12:30 - HCI Seminar
                Skilling Auditorium
                The Design and Long-Term Use of a Personal Electronic Notebook
                Thomas Erickson, Apple Computer 
                Abstract below

         3:15 - Philosophy Department Colloquium
                Encina Hall, Room 423
                Is the Critique of Judgment "Post-Critical"?
                Henry Allison, UCSD Philosophy

  SATRUDAY, 11 MAY
                TREND VI
                Building 460, Room 146
                Department of Linguistics, Stanford
                Schedule below

  MONDAY, 13 MAY
         9:00 - CSLI Interface Lab Tutorials Week
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                The Internet
                New Developments in Education, Business, Medicine,
                  Engineering 

  TUESDAY, 14 MAY
         9:00 - CSLI Interface Lab Tutorials Week
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                Human Interface Design
                Social Responses to Communication Technology

         4:15 - Logic Seminar
                Building 380, Room 381-T

         6:30 - SSP Film Series
                Cubberley Education Building, Room 128
                Language and Consciousness: (I) Are Our Thoughts Shaped by 
                  the Language We Use? and (II) How We Understand Language
                  [interviews with Stephen Pinker] (1994)

  WEDNESDAY, 15 MAY
         9:00 - CSLI Interface Lab Tutorials Week
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                Automatic Speech Recognition
                New Developments in Spoken Language Computer Interfaces

  THURSDAY, 16 MAY
         9:00 - CSLI Interface Lab Tutorials Week
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                Machine Learning
                New Developments in Data Mining

        12:00 - CSLI CogLunch
                Ventura Hall, Room 17 [NOTE ROOM CHANGE]
                Prologomena to Any Future Mind-Brain Synthesis, and
                a Theory About the Nature of Self-Consciousness: 
                Phenomenological and Physiological Constraints
                Michael Corner, Netherlands Institute for Brain
                Research []

         4:15 - SSP Forum
                Building 60, Room 61-F
                Freudian Psychoanalysis: What's It to Philosophers?
                Ariela Lazar, Stanford Philosophy 

  FRIDAY, 17 MAY
        12:00 - Logic Lunch
                Building 380, Room 383-N

        12:30 - HCI Seminar
                Skilling Auditorium
                Heat & Dust: Designing Solutions on the Other Side of the
                World
                Michael Graves and Rao Machiraju, Apple Computer
                [mgraves@apple.com]      

         3:15 - Philosophy Department Colloquium
                Encina Hall, Room 423
                Godel and Quine on Meaning & Mathematics
                Rick Tieszen, SJSU Philosophy

         3:30 - Linguistics Department Colloquium
                Building 460, Room 146
                Complex denominal verbs in German 
                Barbara Siebels, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet
                Duesseldorf and Stanford []

                               ____________

The CSLI Calendar appears weekly on Wednesdays throughout the academic year.
Announcements, abstracts, and other information to appear in the Calendar can
be submitted to [mailto:incalendar@csli.stanford.edu].

Information about CSLI's research program and past issues of the CSLI Calendar
are available at [http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/].  The CSLI Calendar is
also posted each week to [news://nntp-csli.stanford.edu/csli.bboard].

                               ____________

                       CSLI INTERFACE LAB TUTORIALS
                     on 13--16 May 1996, Cordura Hall
                      Four Days of Tutorials on the
         Internet, Human Interfaces to Communication Technology,
            Automatic Speech Recognition, and Machine Learning
              [http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Workshop/]

A full schedule, a list of speakers, and registration information may be found
at the URL given above.  Topics covered on each day are as follows:

 May 13: THE INTERNET
 New Developments in Education, Business, Medicine, Engineering.

The first day's tutorial covers a range of topics centered on the design and
development of effective internet technologies:
 * Internet Agents -- software tools for finding and accessing information on
   the internet;
 * Distance Learning -- delivery of traditional lectures and educational
   material over the internet; new ways of participating in interactive study
   groups; organizing training material so that it can be found on demand;
 * Professional Support Systems -- providing doctors with diagnostic
   information over the internet; professional teamwork on the internet;
 * Digital Libraries -- providing new ways of storing and finding information
   stored in libraries, especially over the Net.

 May 14: HUMAN INTERFACE DESIGN
 Social Responses to Communication Technology

People respond subconsciously to computers, and other devices that convey
information, as if the devices were capable of thoughts and feelings.
Pioneering research being carried out at Stanford shows how social rules can
be exploited to improve Interface design.  Experiments performed by the
creators of this field will be discussed.  Interface designers are strongly
encouraged to attend this seminar.

 May 15: AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION
 New Developments in Spoken Language Computer Interfaces

The third day covers theoretical and practical aspects of Automatic Speech
Recognition. After nearly 30 years of gradual progress, ASR is now showing up
everywhere, over the phone, on PCs, and soon on the internet. The history,
theory, current practice, and future of the ASR field is treated in this
tutorial by several acknowledged authorities in the area who have both
industrial and academic experience.

 May 16: MACHINE LEARNING
 New Developments in Data Mining

The fourth day tutorial reviews computational techniques -- known as machine
learning or data mining -- designed to support this activity, then examines
the main stages of the knowledge discovery process, drawing on illustrative
examples from successful industrial efforts. Applications to be discussed
include mechanical diagnosis, control problems, and financial prediction.

For more information, contact Michele King [mailto:mking@csli.stanford.edu].

                               ____________

                         COGLUNCH SPRING SCHEDULE
                           Theme: Consciousness

The Thursday noon CogLunch series on consciousness will continue
through the Spring Quarter, starting in April.  Here is a tentative
schedule of speakers and titles of the talks:

   April 4: MARLEEN ROZEMOND (Philosophy, Stanford U.)
            "Descartes and Consciousness"
        11: TEED ROCKWELL (Berkeley, CA) 
            "Awareness, Mental Phenomena, and Consciousness:
             A Synthesis of Dennett and Rosenthal"
        18: ROGER SHEPARD (Psychology, Stanford U.)
            "My Experience, Your Experience, and the World We Experience"
        25: JOHN GABRIELI (Psychology, Stanford U.)
            "Consciousness as the Gatekeeper of Memory"
   May   2: BRIAN SMITH (Xerox PARC & Philosophy, Stanford U.)
            "Who's on Third?  The Physical Bases of Consciousness"
         9: BOB ZAJONC (Psychology, Stanford U.)
            "Unappraised Affect"
        16: MICHAEL CORNER (Netherlands Institute for Brain Research)
            "Prolegomena to Any Future Mind-Brain Synthesis, and
             a Theory About the Nature of Self-Consciousness: 
             Phenomenological and Physiological Constraints"
        23: JOHN PERRY [Commentary: G. Guzeldere]
            "Indexicality and the Knowledge Argument"
        30: KEN TAYLOR (Philosophy, Stanford U.)
            "The Hard Problem of Consciousness may not be
             Solvable, but Dualism is Still False"
   June  6: Dead Week
                               ____________

                              STASS SEMINAR
                            on Thursday, 9 May
                    10:00 a.m., Cordura Hall, Room 100
           Second-Order Logic and Plural Noun Phrases - Part 2
                            Jan Tore Loenning
                  University of Oslo Linguistics & CSLI
                       [loenning@csli.stanford.edu]

It is generally assumed that the truth-conditions of plural noun phrases
transcend first-order logic.  Many have further assumed that the
truth-conditions for sentences like

        1) Some students gathered.
        2) Some critics admire only one another,

best can be spelled out as formulas in second-order logic.  But second-order
logic is not on the same firm grounds as first-order logic.  It lacks a
complete axiomatization, and its semantics seems to assume the existence of
certain sets of individuals, hence it has been claimed to be set theory in
disguise.  On the other hand, George Boolos has argued that the ease with
which we understand plural NPs can be taken as a starting point for
understanding second-order logic and has proposed a non-objectual semantics
for monadic second-order logic.

The first talk will consider how large a fragment of second-order logic is
needed to represent the plural noun phrases and to which degree there are
English sentences which distinguish between different possible consequence
relations for second-order logic.  The topic of the second talk will be
whether the use of plural NPs carry any ontological commitments and a
comparison between the objectual and the non-objectual semantics.

                               ____________

                              CSLI COGLUNCH
                            on Thursday, 9 May
                    12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
                            Unappraised Affect
                                Bob Zajonc
                           Stanford Psychology
                
                                ____________

                    LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
                            on Thursday, 9 May
              3:30 p.m., Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
                       Similarity and phonotactics
                           Janet Pierrehumbert
                         Northwestern University

OCP-Place in Arabic provides a classic example of a soft phonotactic
constraint. The strength of the effect depends on the similarity and
proximity of the target consonants. This talk will present a
quantitative model of this interaction, and explore the ramifications
of the model for phonological theory. The model applies and extends
work on modeling similarity in cognitive psychology, suggesting that
phonological knowledge is embedded in more general cognitive
functions.  It eliminates underspecification while still providing for
the differential importance of redundant and nonredundant information.
Lastly, it has implications for architectures (such as Optimality
Theory) by which constraints are combined to predict outcomes.

                                ____________

                  SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FACULTY/STUDENT MIXER
                            on Thursday, 9 May
                    4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F

This week, instead of our regularly scheduled Symbolic Systems Forum,
there will be a Symbolic Systems Faculty/Student Mixer!

We encourage as many faculty and students to come as possible, so that faculty
will have the opportunity to mix with students, students will have the 
opportunity to mix with faculty, students will have the opportunity to mix
with each other, faculty...

                               ____________

                                LOGIC LUNCH
                             on Friday, 10 May
                      12:00 noon, Building 380, Room 383-N
                An Effective Proof that Open Sets are Ramsey
                                Jeremy Avigad
                              Rutgers University

The assertion that open sets are Ramsey is a generalization of
Ramsey's theorem occupying the intersection of combinatorics and
descriptive set theory. I'll present a nice proof of this result which
makes use of a non-principal ultrafilter over omega. Surprisingly, the
proof can be "constructivized" to yield a more effective result, due
to Solovay, from within the theory ATR_0.

                               ____________

                  SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
                            on Friday, 10 May
                     12:30 p.m., Skilling Auditorium 
      The Design and Long-Term Use of a Personal Electronic Notebook
                     Thomas Erickson, Apple Computer
                           [thomas@apple.com ]

A general design problem is discovering how to make something useful, as
opposed to just usable. This problem is particularly acute for systems like
electronic notebooks that support the capture, use, and management of personal
information. Unlike conventional applications such as word processors or
spreadsheets, a notebook is very personal: it only becomes useful over
time-months or years-as it becomes the repository of more and more personally
relevant information, and as it becomes increasingly entwined with its user's
work practices. While it is straightforward to study usability, it is much
more of a challenge to understand which features, and which modes of use,
would make such a notebook useful.

In this talk I'll describe the design and use -- over a period of three and a
half years -- of a personal electronic notebook. The findings provide a useful
data point for those interested in the issue of how to design highly
customizable systems for managing personal information. After a description of
the notebook's interface and the usage practices that have co-evolved with the
interface, I'll discuss some of the features which have made the notebook
useful over the long term, as well as reflecting on trends in the evolution of
its design.
                               ____________

                     PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
                            on Friday, 10 May
                     3:15 p.m., Encina Hall, Room 423
               Is the Critique of Judgment "Post-Critical"?
                              Henry Allison
                             UCSD Philosophy

                               ____________
                                
                            TREND VI schedule
                   Department of Linguistics, Stanford
                             on Saturday, 11 May

         9:30   Young-mee Yu-Cho and Tracy Holloway King 
                  'Semi-syllables and Georgian clusters'
        10:00   Jaye Padgett and Maire Ni Chiosain
                  'Implications of strict locality'
        10:30   Andrew Dolbey and Ronald Sprouse
                  'A unified approach to consonant gradation in Finnish'
        11:00   break
        11:15   Sharon Rose
                  'Conditions on epenthesis in Ethio-Semitic'
        11:45   Geoff Pullum & Rachel Walker 
                  'Glottal nasals'
        12:15   lunch   
         1:15   Andrew Dolbey and Orhan Orgun
                  'Cyclicity vs. output-output correspondence'
         1:45   Will Leben
                  'Disyllabic feet in Djula'
         2:15   Junko Ito and Armin Mester
                  'Correspondence, compositionality, and free ranking'
         2:45   break
         3:00   Juliette Blevins and Andrew Garrett
                  'The origins of C/V metathesis
         3:30   Orhan Orgun and Ronald Sprouse
                  'Beyond MParse'

                               ____________

                             SSP FILM SERIES
                            on Tuesday, 14 May
                   6:30 p.m., Cubberley Hall, Room 128
         Language and Consciousness: (I) Are Our Thoughts Shaped
       by the Language We Use? and (II) How We Understand Language
                 [interviews with Stephen Pinker] (1994)

                               ____________

                              CSLI COGLUNCH
                           on Thursday, 16 May
                    12:00 noon, Ventura Hall, Room 17
           Prologomena to Any Future Mind-Brain Synthesis, 
          and a Theory About the Nature of Self-Consciousness: 
              Phenomenological and Physiological Constraints
       Michael Corner, Netherlands Institute for Brain Research []

                               ____________

                                SSP FORUM
                             on Thursday, 16 May
                        4:15 p.m., Building 60, Room 61-F
                Freudian Psychoanalysis: What's It to Philosophers?
                        Ariela Lazar, Stanford Philosophy 

                               ____________
                                
                  SEMINAR ON HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
                            on Friday, 17 May
                     12:30 p.m., Skilling Auditorium
     Heat & Dust: Designing Solutions on the Other Side of the World
             Michael Graves and Rao Machiraju, Apple Computer
                        [mgraves@apple.com]      

For the past year and a half, our group at Apple Computer has been
investigating the role mobile computing might play in empowering the rural
health workers of India. India provides preventive health care for its rural
population of about 700 million people. At the village level, Auxiliary Nurse
Midwives are the key mediators for all aspects of health care delivery. Our
project aims at providing support tools, beginning at this village level.

The work on this project is best characterized as being at the intersection of
learning, organizational change, computing technology and information
systems. Our design philosophy is evolutionary in nature, is led by user needs
based on task specific assistance, simplicity, and ease of access and
use. Organizationally, our intention is to support people's work within the
context in which they are working. Technically, our prototypes are built on a
Newton 2.0 platform, with connections to desktop and server systems to come.

Clearly there are many ways to approach such an investigation. We will talk
about our approach and address the following questions.

        *How did the project come about and why are we doing it? 
        *What are the skill sets required to undertake such an effort? 
        *What are some of the challenges specific to this kind of effort? 
        *What have we done? (Yes, we will show a demo.) 
        *What have we learned, and what do we do next? 

Our group's charter is to investigate the "any time-any place" learning
paradigm and rapidly iterate proof-of-concept prototypes.

                               ____________

                     PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
                            on Friday, 17 May
                     3:15 p.m., Encina Hall, Room 423
                 Godel and Quine on Meaning & Mathematics
                      Rick Tieszen, SJSU Philosophy

                               ____________

                    LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
                            on Friday, 17 May
                    3:30 p.m., Building 460, Room 146
                    Complex denominal verbs in German
               Barbara Siebels, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet
                       Duesseldorf and Stanford []

In my talk I will propose a lexical account of complex denominal verbs,
i.e., denominal particle verbs and denominal prefix verbs, within the
framework of Lexical Decomposition Grammar (Wunderlich 1994). If one requires
that morphological derivation and semantic composition be isomorphic, the
German complex denominal verbs give rise to apparent mismatches between
morphology and semantics.  I assume a morpheme-based account and then explore
the minimum further assumptions necessary to account for these mismatches.

I assume that complex denominal verbs obey the same structural, semantic
and conceptual constraints as simple denominal verbs. Denominal verbs are
derived by the instantiation of abstract templates into which the base noun is
integrated. These abstract templates account both for the distributional
patterns of possible and impossible denominal verbs observed by Clark & Clark
(1979) and Hale & Keyser (1992) and for the required semantic and referential
shifts in the noun-verb conversion. Denominal verbs are structurally
constrained by the Lowest Argument Restriction (LAR), which requires the base
noun to saturate the lowest ranked argument of the abstract template.

I will show that complex denominal verbs exhibit the same degree of
heterogenity as other complex verbs. This heterogenity consists of differences
in the preverbs' argument structure effects on the bases and the mechanisms
required for semantic composition. Preverbs can be classified as lexical
arguments, lexical adjuncts and pure aspectual markers, according to these
differences.

In particular, I will consider the following types of complex denominal verbs:

(1) a. er-schreinern `get sth. by doing carpentry', an-fiedeln `fiddle at'
    b. unter-kellern [under-cellar], auf-satteln `saddle up' 
       (complex locatum verbs)
    c. auf-bahren `lay on the bier', ein-rahmen `frame' 
       (complex location verbs)
    d. ver-stauben `get dusty', ver-silbern `silver plate'
    e. ver-slumen `become a slum', ver-sklaven `enslave'

I will argue that (1a) has to be considered as the default case: in the first
step, the denominal base is derived, in the second step the preverb is added
as a lexical adjunct. The most problematic cases are the complex denominal
verbs in (1d/e): in (1d) the base noun is semantically integrated into the
relation contributed by the prefix, in (1e) the prefixes appear to be
pleonastic prefixes without a specific semantic contribution.

I want to show that (i) once the lexical entries of the preverbs are
specified, the required results of the formation of complex denominal verbs
are rendered automatically, (ii) no specific assumptions have to be made for
the preverbs with respect to the denominal bases, and (iii) the lexical
approach I advocate is simpler and more flexible than Hale & Keyser's
syntactic approach.
                               ____________