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CSLI Calendar, 16 May 1996, vol.11:27




   
         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
______________________________________________________________________________

16 May 1996                      Stanford                      Vol. 11, No. 27
______________________________________________________________________________

      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 16 MAY -- 24 MAY 1996


  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 
                Abstract below

        7:30 -  Stanford Phonology Workshop
                Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
                OT versus Two-Level Phonology: Limits of Faithfulness
                Orhan Orgun, UC Berkeley
                Abstract below

  FRIDAY, 17 MAY
        12:00 - Logic Lunch
                Building 380, Room 383-N
                Resolution Rule for Diagrams
                Grigori Mints, Stanford Philosophy
                [mints@csli]
                Abstract below

        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
                Margaret Jacks Hall(460), Room 146
                Complex denominal verbs in German 
                Barbara Siebels, Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet
                Duesseldorf and Stanford []
                Abstract below

MONDAY, 20 MAY  
        1:15 -  Intensional Logic
                Room 550D
                Dynamic Epistemic Logic
                Willem Groeneveld, University of Amsterdam

TUESDAY, 21 MAY
        6:30 -  SSP Film Series
                Cubberley Hall, Room 128
                Language and Consciousness: (III) The Evolution of Language
                and (IV) Consciousness and Cognition
                [more interviews with Stephen Pinker] (1994)
                Abstract below

WEDNESDAY, 22 MAY
        4:15 -  Seminar on Computation Learning and Probabilistic Reasoning
                Gates Building, Room 104
                Learning Bayesian Networks with Local Structure
                Moises Goldszmidt

THURSDAY, 23 MAY
        12:00 - CSLI CogLunch
                Cordura Hall, Room 100
                [Commentary: Guven Guzeldere]
                Indexicality and the Knowledge Argument
                John Perry, Stanford Philosophy
                [john@csli.stanford.edu]

         4:15 - SSP Forum
                Presentation Palace, Room 025 [NOTE ROOM CHANGE]
                SiliconBase: SiliconBase: Networked Scholarly
                Workspaces for the History of High Technology   
                Tim Lenoir, Stanford History Department
                Abstract below

FRIDAY, 24 MAY
        12:30 - HCI Seminar
                Skilling Auditorium
                Play and Learning with Technology, Realities of the
                Marketplace 
                Ann McCormick, CAPS Mira Studio
                [ann@mirastudio.com]

         1:00 - Philosophy Department One-Day Conference
                Tresidder Union, Oak West Lounge, 2nd Fl
                Evolution & Human Behavior
                Philip Kitcher, Susan Oyama, and John Dupre

        1:15 -  Translation Seminar
                Ventura Hall, Room 17
                Multilingual Document Recognition
                Larry Spitz, Daimler Benz Research and Technology Center
                Abstract below

        3:30 -  Linguistic Department Colloquium
                Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
                Distribution of Objects in Urdu
                Miriam Butt (Universitaet Stuttgart
                [mutt@ims.uni-stuttgart.de]) and
                Tracy King (Stanford [thking@csli]) 

                               ____________

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"

PLEASE NOTE: The last CogLunch talk of the Spring Quarter by Ken Taylor has
been cancelled (5/30).  CogLunch will conclude its 1995-96 program by John
Perry's talk on 5/23. 
                               ____________

                            INTENSIONAL LOGIC
                           1:15 p.m., Room 550D

As usual, the final part of this course is devoted to presentations of special
topics from current research. 

   May 13: Modal Remodeling for Predicate Logic 1 
           (how to make first-order logic decidable by generalizing Tarski
           semantics) 
           JOHAN VAN BENTHEM

   May 15: Modal Remodeling for Predicate Logic 2
           (general consequences of this viewpoint)
           JOHAN VAN BENTHEM

   May 20: Dynamic Epistemic Logic
           (many-person updates in epistemic logic)
           Willem Groeneveld (Amsterdam)

   May 22: Modal Logic, Representation and Translation
           (analyzing modal logics via other, less or more, multi-purpose
           standard logics) 
           MARIA MANZANO (Barcelona)

   May 29: A Philosophical Conception of Modal Logic
           (a view of modal logic leading to strong intensional theories with
           both historic 
           (Leibniz, Frege) and systematical uses)
           ED ZALTA (Stanford)

LAST WEEK: There may be presentations by some Dutch visitors to the '5th CSLI
Workshop in Logic, Language and Computation', which will be announced
separately. 

To get further information concerning course contents, as well as reading
materials, please contact {johan, willem, manzano, zalta} @csli.stanford.edu,
respectively. 

                               ____________

                              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 
                         lazar@csli.stanford.edu

Unlike many other intellectual endeavors, psychoanalytic theory has had
an enormous effect on popular culture. This fact makes an exposition
of the theory of greater interest to non-experts but also presents
special challenges in its presentation. In addition, a number of
fierce debates concerning the status of this theory and its implications
are currently going on. Most of the participants in these public
debates know little about the theory. This makes it all the more necessary
to contribute in a responsible way to its presentation.

This talk will address briefly a number of key concepts in psychoanalytic
theory including the unconscious, infantile sexuality and the
way in which they contributed to a revolution in the  conception of the 
mind. 

A special consideration will be given to the relation between common-sense
psychological explanations, on the one hand, and corresponding
explanations that are offered by the theory. What is the advantage, if
any, in providing psychoanalytic explanations of behavior?  What
are the ways in which psychoanalytic hypotheses may be
examined? An emphasis will be put on the question of whether
psychoanalysis may be relevant to the philosophical study of the mind.

                               ____________

                 THE PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP AT STANFORD
                       on Thursday, 16 May
        7:30 p.m., Margaret Jacks Hall
        OT versus Two-Level Phonology: Limits of Faithfulness
                     Orhan Orgun, UC Berkeley

In his discussion of opacity in phonology, McCarthy (1996) compares OT
(Prince and Smolensky 1993) with Two Level Phonology (Koskenniemi
1983). He claims that OT is superior on both explanatory and
descriptive grounds. In particular, he claims that " Two Level
Phonology, as formalized by Koskenniemi (1983), is unable to deal with
complex systems of transparency and opacity like Icelandic."

In this talk, I first present a two level analysis of
Icelandic, demonstrating that the descriptive capacity of Two Level
Phonology is greater than McCarthy presumes. Next, I present a number
of phenomena where a faithfulness-based OT analysis is either
impossible ("circle" shifts) or undesirable (case where the reflex of
a diachronic sound change is arbitrary from a synchronic point of
view, also discussed by Blevins 1996). I show that these phenomena
pose no descriptive challenge to Two Level Phonology.

The talk ends with some speculation on the give and take
between descriptive adequacy and explanatory elegance, and on ways in
which the explanatory edge of OT may be preserved without losing the
descriptive and computational advantages of Two Level Phonology.

                               ____________

                               LOGIC LUNCH
                            on Friday, 17 May
                   12:00 noon, Building 380, Room 383-N
                       Resolution Rule for Diagrams
                    Grigori Mints, Stanford Philosophy
                        [mints@csli.stanford.edu]

Resolution calculus for S5 is a good starting point for a system of graphical
reasoning. Rules and strategies discovered in 1980-ies and earlier turn out to
be especially suitable for user-friendly interface and human-friendly
deduction.  
                               ____________
                                
                  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.
                               ____________

                             SSP FILM SERIES
                            on Tuesday, 21 May
                 6:30 p.m., Cubberley Education Building
                        Language and Consciousness
                        (Parts III and IV) (1994)

This video features the last two (out of four) 30-minute interviews of
Steven Pinker, psycholinguist from MIT, from the series THINKING
ALLOWED. Part III's topic is "The Evolution of Language" and Part IV's
is "Consciousness and Cognition". Parts I and II were shown last week.

The Symbolic Systems Film Series showcases films and tapes of general
cognitive science interest. Attendance at film series events can
substitute for attendance at the Symbolic Systems Forum for students
enrolled in SSP 10 for one unit. All are welcome at these events. The
showing of the videos is followed by a discussion, and researchers who
are knowledgeable about the program's topic are urged to join us in
evaluating it.
                               ____________


                     SEMINAR ON COMPUTATION LEARNING 
                                   AND
                         PROBABILISTIC REASONING
                          on Wednesday, 22 May
                   4:15 p.m., Gates Building, Room 104
             Learning Bayesian Networks with Local Structure
                            Moises Goldszmidt

                               ____________

                                SSP FORUM
                           on Thursday, 23 May
       4:15 p.m., Presentation Palace, Room 025 (NOTE ROOM CHANGE)
              SiliconBase: SiliconBase: Networked Scholarly
             Workspaces for the History of High Technology      
                 Tim Lenoir, Stanford History Department

I will discuss the Stanford Information Technology and Society Project and
our goals of constructing a digital library and networked scholarly
workspace to enable collaborate research projects and distance learning on
topics related to SiliconValley and the history of high technology. A live
demo of our progress to date and description of current work in progress
will serve as a basis for discussing the future of  scholarly practices.

                               ____________

                              CSLI COGLUNCH
                           on Thursday, 23 May
                    12:00 noon, Cordura Hall, Room 100
                      [Commentary: Guven Guzeldere]
                 Indexicality and the Knowledge Argument
                     John Perry, Stanford Philosophy
                         [john@csli.stanford.edu]

                               ____________

                 PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT ONE-DAY CONFERENCE
                        Evolution & Human Behavior
                             on Fridy, 24 May
                  1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.Tresidder Union
                         Oak West Lounge, 2nd Fl
                                Speakers:
          States of Nature: Evolution, Altruism, and Morality
                       Philip Kitcher, UC San Diego
                        Politics of the Boundary
                   Susan Oyama, John Jay College, CUNY
               What the Theory of Evolution Can't Tell Us
                     John Dupre, Stanford University

                               ____________

                           TRANSLATION SEMINAR
                            on Friday, 24 May
                     1:15 p.m., Ventura Hall, Room 17
                    Multilingual Document Recognition
                               Larry Spitz
               Daimler Benz Research and Technology Center

As world trade barriers fall and we are increasingly exposed to documents
in languages in which we may not be fluent. Central to solving the problems
is the process of determining which language a document contains. Knowledge
of the language content of the document has important implications to the
further processing of the document, whether this processing is OCR, filing 
and retrieval, or machine translation.
 
Language identification is done from the image but without character
recognition. The set of possible languages currently includes 27 languages 
ranging from English, French and German to Japanese, Chinese and
Korean. The technique involves the analysis of the spatial relationships
between fiducial points in the text image to determine which of two broad
script classes are present: Han or Latin.
 
Within the Han script class, language identification is determined on the
basis of an optical density distribution analysis. Within the Latin
script class, language identification is performed by simple character
shape classification. These shape codes are aggregated into word shape
tokens and language determination is accomplished. 

                               ____________

                    LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
                            on Friday, 24 May
              3:30 p.m., Margaret Jacks Hall (460), Room 146
                     Distribution of Objects in Urdu
                   Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King
                   University of Stuttgart and Stanford

                               ____________

                              CSLI VISITORS

      * Willem Groeneveld
        Department of Philosophy
        University of Amsterdam
        May 6 - July 7, 1996
        Cordura 215, 723-3021
        willem@csli.stanford.edu
        Research Interests: logic and formal semantics, in particular dynamic
        semantics and dynamic epistemic logic.

                               ____________