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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 27 November 2002, vol. 18:12
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
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27 November 2002 Stanford Vol. 18, No. 12
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A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 27 NOVEMBER 2002 TO 6 DECEMBER 2002
THURSDAY, 28 NOVEMBER 2002
University Holiday - Eat well
FRIDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 2002
University Holiday - Sleep well
MONDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2002
4:15pm Broad Area Colloquium in AI,
Geometry, Graphics, Robotics, and Vision
TCSeq 200
Norm Badler
U. Penn
http://robotics.stanford.edu/ba-colloquium/
3:30pm Social Lab
Jordan Hall 420:050
The Effects of Emotional Ambivalence on Creativity
Christina Ting Fong
Graduate School of Business, Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#social_lab
TUESDAY, 3 DECEMBER 2002
4:00pm BISC Seminar
405 Soda Hall, Berkeley
Web Intelligence: Concept-Based Search Engine and Navigation
Masoud Nikravesh
BISC, UC Berkeley and NERSC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/Seminars/
Abstract below
4:00pm UC Berkeley Dissertation Defense
Hogan Room (521 Cory Hall), UC Berkeley
Bidigital Teletaction System Design and Performance
Gabriel Moy
EECS, UC Berkeley
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~gmoy/
Abstract below
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Bldg. 380:381T (math corner)
Classification theory for Abstract Elementary Classes
Monica VanDieren
Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
4:15pm History of Science Colloquium
Bldg. 200:307
The Art of the Interface in Mixed Realities: Predecessors and Visions
Oliver Grau
Humboldt University, Berlin Germany
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/colloquia.html
Abstract below
4:15pm Computer Musings
SEQ room 200
Chains of subsets, and their curious relation to binary trees
Don Knuth
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/musings.html
5:30pm Syntax Workshop
Margaret Jacks 460:126
An Optimality Theoretic Typology of Ergative Morphology in Indo Aryan
Ashwini Deo and Devyani Sharma
Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/sssg/
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2002
12 noon Psychology Developmental Brownbags
Jordan Hall 420:100
One mouse, two mouses, three mice: How children might recover
from speech errors without parental feedback, innate rules or
any other explicit interventions (including those royal and divine)
Michael Ramscar
Psychology, Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#dev_brownbag
3:00pm Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program Seminar
Wallenberg Learning Theater, Main Quad
HP's e-Inclusion Strategy
Janiece Evans-Page and Scott Bossinger
Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
Information below
4:00pm Fourth annual CS 248 3D video game competition
Graphics teaching labs, basement level, Sweet Hall
Information below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Lab Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Mozilla and Open Source, Our Project Dynamics and Exploitable
Technologies
Scott Collins
Mozilla
http://ee380.stanford.edu/contents.html
THURSDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2002
12:15pm CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
Perceiving, Comprehending and Measuring Design Activity through the
Questions Asked while Designing
Ozgur Eris
Center for Design Research, Stanford
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
4:00pm Personality Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Self defining memories in late adolescence
Avril Thorne
UC Santa Cruz
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#person_lab
4:00pm PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
Grapes, Wine & the Hilgard Project
Roger Boulton
Scott Professor of Enology and Chemical Engineering, UC Davis
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:00pm UC Berkeley Electronic Systems Design Seminar
DOP Center Classroom, 540AB Cory Hall (UC Berkeley)
The Design of a Formal Property-Specification Language
Moshe Y. Vardi
Rice University
http://www-cad.eecs.berkeley.edu/esd-seminar
Abstract Below
4:15pm SSP: Symbolic Systems Forum
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
Linguistically Rich Statistical Models of Language
Joseph Smarr
Symbolic Systems Program
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Networking Lecture
Packard 101
OceanStore: Toward Global Scale, Self-Repairing, Secure,
and Persistent Storage
John Kubiatowicz
Computer Science Division, UC Berkeley
Abstract Below
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman B060
Control of Synapse Number and Strength in Developing Cortical Networks
Gina Turrigiano
Brandeis University
http://www-med.stanford.edu/sbrc/calendar/
5:30pm Stanford Phonology Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
Mary Rose
Linguistics, Stanford University
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
FRIDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2002
11:00am Berkeley Institute of Cognitive and Brain Seminar
Tolman 5101 (Berkeley)
Vision Concepts in Search of Improved Transportation Safety:
How the Warning Signal Tortoise Beats the Hare, and How the
Elephant Does Too, but We Can't Tell
Ted Cohn
Dept. of Bioengineering and School of Optometry, UC Berkeley
http://socrates.berkeley.edu:4247/seminar.html
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar
Gates B01
Electronic Chalk: A tool for live and remote teaching
Raul Rojas
Freie Universitaet Berlin
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q
Coming to our Senses: Could Concept Empiricism Be True?
Jesse Prinz
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
3:15pm Friday Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Elisabetta Zibetti
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/news.html#frisem
3:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
Evolutionary Optimality Theory
Gerhard Jaeger
Universitaat Potsdam
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
Abstract below
____________
Stanford Blood Bank status: Critical shortage of O- and a shortage
of A-. For an appointment: http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/
or call 650-723-7831. It only takes an hour of your time.
____________
BERKELEY BISC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 3 December 2002, 4:00pm-5:30pm
405 Soda (Berkeley)
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/Seminars/
Web Intelligence: Concept-Based Search Engine and Navigation
Masoud Nikravesh
BISC, UC Berkeley and NERSC, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
In this presentation, we will present an intelligent model that can
mine the Internet to conceptually match and rank homepages based on
predefined linguistic formulations and rules defined by experts or
based on a set of known homepages. The model will be used for
intelligent information and knowledge retrieval through conceptual
matching of both text and images (here defined as "Concept"). The
model can also be used for constructing fuzzy ontology or terms
related to the context of the query and search to resolve the
ambiguity. This model can be used to calculate conceptually the degree
of match to the object or query. We will also present the integration
of our technology into commercial search engines such as Google and
Yahoo! as a framework that can be used to integrate our model into any
other commercial search engines, or development of the next generation
of search engines.
(This work is in collaboration with Prof Tomohiro Takagi from
Department of Computer Science, Meiji University; Japan).
____________
UC BERKELEY DISSERTATION DEFENSE
on Tuesday, 3 December 2002, 4:00pm
Hogan Room (521 Cory Hall), Berkeley
Bidigital Teletaction System Design and Performance
Gabriel Moy
EECS, UC Berkeley
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~gmoy/
This dissertation explores the design and performance of a bidigital
teletaction, a two-fingered tactile sensing and feedback, system.
This tactile recording and playback device is a basic step towards
developing another sensory transmission device, such as radio for
audio transmission and television for video transmission.
Starting with human mechanoreceptor responses and perception, a linear
elastic model of teletaction, and current sensor and actuator
technologies, we design and build a tactile feedback device which can
display a wide range of pressure profiles. Our feedback devices
present tactile information to the user by changing the pressure
inside sealed, expandable air chambers placed next to the finger.
Element to element spacing is 2 mm. We use capacitive tactile sensors
to collect real-time touch data for presentation to the user.
Our human psychophysics experiments show that the tactile feedback
device can display simulated 5~mm period gratings. We also show that
the full bidigital teletaction system successfully senses, transmits,
and displays tactile information from a mock 2 mm diameter blood
vessel embedded in a soft silicone gel pulsing at approximately 1 Hz.
____________
HISTORY OF SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 3 December 2002, 4:15pm
Bldg. 200:307 (History)
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/colloquia.html
The Art of the Interface in Mixed Realities: Predecessors and Visions
Oliver Grau
Humboldt University, Berlin Germany
The approach of this paper is broad and historical; it attempts to
expand a narrow technical view by looking at historic art media
together with contemporary media art. By focusing on recent art
against the backdrop of historic developments, it is possible to
better analyze and grasp what is really new in media art and, using
cornerstones from the history of media of illusion and immersion, it
is a material and theoretical contribution to a new, emerging
discipline: the science of the image. Where and how does the new genre
of virtual art fit into the art history of illusion and immersion in
the image, that is, how do older elements continue to live on and
influence this contemporary art? What part does this play in the
current metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image?
About the speaker: Dr. Grau is a new-media art historian and lectures
at the Department of Art History, Humboldt University in
Berlin. Oliver Grau is a visiting professor at the Kunstuniversity
Linz and is head of the German Science Foundation project on Immersive
Art in Berlin, also he is developing the first international data base
resource for virtual art, a result of his work on the history of
immersion and virtual art. Grau studied art history, economics,
archaeology, and Italian literature in Hamburg, London, and Siena with
further research in Japan and the U.S.A. He published widely on VR-art
and lectured in Europe, Japan, Brasil and the US. Oliver Grau is a
member of the Young Academy of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of
Sciences (BBAW) and the Leopoldina. His research focuses on the
history of illusion and immersion in media and art, the history of the
idea and culture of telepresence and telecommunication, genetic art,
and artificial intelligence. Other memberships and collaborations
include the Images of Knowledge project at the Art&Tech Lab, Linz,
Austria, and the Frieda Ackermann Working Group.
____________
SYNTAX WORKSHOP
on Tuesday, 3 December 2002, 5:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/sssg/
An Optimality Theoretic Typology of Ergative Morphology in Indo Aryan
Ashwini Deo and Devyani Sharma
Stanford University
While New Indo-Aryan languages are a common example of morphological
ergativity, the range of variation in ergative marking and agreement
among these languages has not been examined in detail. The goals of
this paper are twofold. We first present a detailed typology of
ergative marking and agreement in Indo-Aryan languages, demonstrating
that a progressive loss of ergative marking has occurred to varying
degrees diachronically in different systems. This process is
manifested in two distinct strategies of markedness reduction: loss of
overt subject marking in the nominal domain and loss of marked
agreement in the verbal domain. Second, we present a formal account of
this typological range within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT;
Prince and Smolensky 1993) by developing constraints on case-marking
(Aissen 1999; Woolford 2000) and agreement in terms of universal
subhierarchies of markedness. An extension of this analysis to
dialectal variation in one language, Marathi, demonstrates that the
dialectal typology parallels the cross-linguistic typology within the
range permitted by the parent language (Old Marathi). This dialectal
typology also furnishes more evidence of intermediate systems
predicted by the OT analysis. Finally, the synchronic typological
analysis of languages and dialects is correlated with the diachronic
stages of loss of ergativity.
____________
REUTERS FOUNDATION DIGITAL VISION PROGRAM SEMINAR
on Wednesday, 4 December 2002, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Wallenberg Learning Theater, Wallenberg Hall, Main Quad.
http://reuters.stanford.edu/seminar_speakers.html
HP's e-Inclusion Strategy
Janiece Evans-Page and Scott Bossinger
Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto
HP is committed to making the social and economic benefits of the
digital age accessible to all people through our e-Inclusion strategy.
The majority of our strategic grants initiatives are aligned with our
e-Inclusion strategy. Through these initiatives, HP is providing the
technology resources, tools, and solutions to creatively address
important issues in underserved communities.
____________
FOURTH ANNUAL CS 248 3D VIDEO GAME COMPETITION
on Wednesday, 4 December 2002, 4:00pm-6:00pm
Graphics teaching labs, basement level, Sweet Hall
At 4:00pm on Wednesday, December 4, a judging will be held to select
the best 3D video game produced by a current student (or team of
students) in CS 248 - Introduction to Computer Graphics.
The jury will consist of:
BRENT IVERSON, Chief Technical Office (CTO) of Electronic Arts's
Redwood Shores studio. Other companies Brent has been affiliated with
include Jane's Combat Simulations and Sonalysts, Inc. Game credits at
Electronic Arts include Rumble Racing, Sub Command, World War II
Fighters, U.S. Navy Fighters, Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, and LHX:
Attack Chopper.
DENNIS ("THRESH") FONG, winner of the 1997 Red Annihilation Quake
Tournament. Still undefeated in tournament play, Dennis is generally
acknowledged to be the best Quake/Doom player in the world. He
co-authored the Official Quake II Strategy Guide, and co-founded the
gamer's portal "gamers.com". He also writes a monthly column in PC
Gamer magazine.
GARY KING, of NVIDIA's game developer relations team. Gary is also a
Stanford alum and a veteran of the first CS248 game competition.
GEORGE PETSCHNIGG, Master's student in Electrical Engineering, winner
of last year's videogame competition, and a stalwart teaching
assistant in CS 248 this year.
ZAK MIDDLETON, Master's student in Computer Science and a stalwart
teaching assistant in CS 248 this year.
While grades for the assignments in CS 248 are based mainly on
"technical merit", entries in the video game competition will be
judged on technical merit, compelling game play, and originality.
Students are not required to participate in this competition.
Here is the schedule of events:
Wednesday, December 4:
9:00 - 3:30 Grading of video games (course students only)
3:30 - 4:00 Professor and TAs meet to choose 7-8 finalist teams
4:00 Public part of video game competition begins
4:00 - 5:30 Finalists present their games to the jury
5:30 - 5:45 Jury retires to consider their decision
5:45 Announcement of winners
5:45 - 6:30 Continued heavy partying
There will be one grand prize - an all-expenses-paid trip to Siggraph
2003 in San Diego next summer, and one second-place prize - dinner for
two at Il Fornaio in Palo Alto. In addition, every member of a
finalist team will receive a current video game title for the PC
platform, generously donated by Electronic Arts. Finally, there will
also be a special prize given for the wackiest or most daring
submission - a Microsoft Xbox, generously donated by NVIDIA. If the
grand prize is won by a team, it must be split among the team members.
The second-place prize will be duplicated as necessary to cover the
team. Only one Xbox will be awarded.
Refreshments will be served beginning at 4:00pm. Finalists' entries
will be "hung" on the PCs in the graphics labs and will be available
for viewing throughout the judging and party.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 5 December 2002, 12:15pm-1:30pm
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Perceiving, Comprehending and Measuring Design Activity
through the Questions Asked while Designing
Ozgur Eris, Ph.D.
Center for Design Research, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford
Designing is question intensive. However, our understanding of what
designers accomplish by asking questions is rather limited. The
research I will present in this talk treats question asking while
designing as a process, and examines its key aspects. The theoretical
part of the research involves the development of a taxonomy of
questions asked while designing. The contribution of the
taxonomy--apart from proving to be a comprehensive analysis
framework--is its ability to differentiate between Deep Reasoning
Questions (DRQs), and Generative Design Questions (GDQs).
The empirical part of the research involves designing and conducting
experiments to test hypotheses generated from field observations. The
more significant hypotheses postulate relationships between question
asking processes of teams and their design processes, and between
their combined DRQ+GDQ asking rates and performance. Both hypotheses
were verified. The findings also demonstrated DRQ+GDQ utilization to
be a mechanism designers rely on for managing divergent and convergent
modes of thinking. Special consideration was given to laying out the
foundations of a unified design theory, which integrates the findings
on question asking with existing understandings on decision making in
design contexts.
____________
UC BERKELEY ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS DESIGN SEMINAR
on Thursday, 5 December 2002, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
DOP Center Classroom (540AB), Cory Hall (UC Berkeley)
http://www-cad.eecs.berkeley.edu/esd-seminar
The Design of a Formal Property-Specification Language
Moshe Y. Vardi
Rice University
In recent years, the need for formal specification languages is
growing rapidly as the functional validation environment in
semiconductor design is changing to include more and more validation
engines based on formal verification technologies. In particular, the
usage of Formal Equivalence Verification and Formal Property
Verification is growing, new symbolic simulation engines are
introduced and hybrid environments of scalar and symbolic simulators
are developed. To facilitate the use of these new-generation
validation engines - properties, checkers and reference models need to
be developed in a formal language.
In this talk we describe the design of the ForSpec Temporal Logic
(FTL), the new temporal logic of ForSpec, Intel's new formal
property-specification language, which is today part of Synopsis
OpenVera hardware verification language (http://www.open-vera.com).
The key features of FTL are: it is a linear temporal logic, based on
Pnueli's LTL, it enables the user to define temporal connectives over
time windows, it enables the user to define regular events, which are
regular sequences of Boolean events, and then relate such events via
special connectives, and it contains constructs that enable the user
to model multiple clock and reset signals, which is useful in the
verification of globally asynchronous and locally synchronous hardware
designs. The focus of the talk is on design rationale, rather than a
detailed language description.
About the Speaker: Moshe Y. Vardi is Karen Ostrum George Professor
in Computational Engineering and Chair of Computer Science at Rice
University. His interests focus on applications of logic to computer
science, including database theory, finite-model theory, knowledge in
multi-agent systems, computer-aided verification and reasoning, and
teaching logic across the curriculum.
____________
SSP: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 5 December 2002, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu:8081/ssp-dynamic/servlet/ssp_events
Linguistically Rich Statistical Models of Language
Joseph Smarr
Symbolic Systems Program
Nearly every prominent vision of the future includes people conversing
with computers using natural language. Realizing this vision requires
solving both "general AI problems" (knowledge representation, common
sense reasoning, etc.) and language-specific problems (coping with the
complexity, ambiguity, and flexibility of natural language). Much
progress has been made on this latter front in the last half-century
by two rather disconnected fields of research: Theoretical Linguistics
and Natural Language Processing.
Theoretical Linguistics seeks to build rich logical representations of
language that explicate its structure and meaning, and in so doing,
describe the broad sets of valid and invalid utterances. NLP in
contrast has tended to settle for simpler representations that allow
robust processing of everyday language use, often relying on a
probabilistic (rather than categorical) view of language.
Now there is a historic convergence of the two fields taking
place-Theoretical Linguists are building applied systems using
techniques from NLP like statistical disambiguation, and NLP
researchers are adopting richer, more linguistically sophisticated
models for traditional NLP tasks like Information Extraction. This
talk will describe in more detail the circumstances and substance of
this convergence, highlighting recent work in service of the unified
goal of building linguistically rich statistical models of language.
____________
NETWORKING LECTURE
on Thursday, 5 December 2002, 4:15pm
Packard EE 101
OceanStore: Toward Global Scale, Self-Repairing, Secure,
and Persistent Storage
John Kubiatowicz
Computer Science Division, UC Berkeley
The peer-to-peer revolution seems to promise that the vast, untrusted,
and unreliable resource of the Internet can lead to desirable
properties such as security, availability, and 1000-year durability.
In this talk, we will examine how this might be possible. We will
examine the mechanisms of OceanStore, a utility infrastructure
designed to span the globe and provide continuous access to persistent
information. The OceanStore model involves hundreds or thousands of
service providers cooperating to provide service.
To achieve its properties, OceanStore exploits the power of aggregates
-- many elements working together. Since OceanStore is comprised of
untrusted servers, data is protected through redundancy and
cryptographic techniques. To improve performance, data is allowed to
be cached anywhere, anytime. Its routing infrastructure is
self-repairing and utilizes path redundancy and continuous monitoring
to adapt to regional outages and denial of service attacks.
Monitoring also enhances performance through pro-active movement of
data. This talk will describe the mechanisms of OceanStore and
discuss the status of its implementation.
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 6 December 2002, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/cs547/
Electronic Chalk: A tool for live and remote teaching
Raul Rojas
Freie Universitaet Berlin
http://www.e-chalk.de/
E-Chalk is a system to record live lectures and transmit them over the
Internet. The lecturer writes directly on a large touch sensitive
surface (whiteboard or retro projection system) talking directly to
the class. Three streams are transmitted over the Internet: audio,
video, and board contents. The system is completely written in Java,
therefore the potential audience needs only an Internet browser for
receiving the three streams. It is possible to do postproduction of
the lectures by erasing, rearranging, or recording new segments.
The philosophy of E-Chalk is to provide "smart" tools for enhancing
the classroom experience. The lecturer can paste images on the board
directly from bookmarks. He or she can also call an algebraic server
to solve equations or plot functions (Mathematica from Wolfram
Research). It is also possible to access web sites directly, send a
textual query, and get a textual answer. It is possible, for example,
to ask for a translation, a calendar, or any information provided by
Web sites and integrate this into the board contents on the fly
. E-Chalk is intended to be controlled using handwriting
recognition. A first prototype of mathematical handwriting recognition
has been written.
E-Chalk can be used with a variety of hardware: touch sensitive
whiteboards, large touch screens, ultrasound digitizers, PDAs and
the new tablet PCs. It is also possible to use E-Chalk in
combination with video conferencing systems. In the talk, I will
explain what is our vision for the future and how pen based
computing fits into that picture.
About the speaker: Raul Rojas is a Professor of Artificial
Intelligence at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science,
Freie Universitaet Berlin He is the author of several books about
Neural Networks and the History of Computing. He is also a member of
the editorial board of several journals and has published extensively
about theory and applications of Neural Networks. Rojas received his
PhD and "Habilitation" (an additional German degree after the PhD)
from Freie Universitaet Berlin. He was a Professor of Computer Science
at the Technical University of Vienna and at the University of Halle,
before moving to the FU Berlin in 1997. His research interests include
topics in AI, robotics, and multimedia tools for the
classroom. Prof. Rojas is the team leader of the FU-Fighters, a
robotic soccer team that has won three times second place at the
RoboCup robotic soccer world championship ( http://www.fu-fighters.de/
). He was also advisor to the team that developed the handwriting
recognition system for the Bundespost. The Bundespost mail-sorting
machines are now handling several million letters a day. The E-Chalk
system won the Entrepreneurs Multimedia Prize 2001 from the Ministry
of Economics and Research in Germany.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 6 December 2002, 3:30pm
Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 460:126
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/
Evolutionary Optimality Theory
Gerhard Jaeger
Universitaat Potsdam
In the talk I will propose a variant of Boersma's Gradual Learning
Algorithm for Stochastic Optimality Theory. While in the original
version the learner is always (or tries to become) a speaker, I assume
that the learner is both speaker and hearer. This learning theory is
applied to the OT system from Aissen (2000), which was developed to
explain the typology of differential case marking. It can be shown
that the constraint sub-hierarchies that Aissen assumes to be
universal follow from the statistical patterns of language use that
have been uncovered in several corpus studies, if one adopts the
bidirectional learning approach.
Not all case marking patterns are learnable by the Bidirectional
Gradual Learning Algorithm (BiGLA), and some patterns are easier to
learn than others. If learning with limited resources is repeated over
several generations, one can distinguish stable and instable language
types, and certain tendencies for language change emerge. In the
second part of the talk I will present and discuss some experimental
findings on the basis of this evolutionary approach.
____________
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