COLING'94: ABSTRACT of the Tutorials
- Theme:
- Parsing Technologies: the Right Tool for the Right Problem.
- Lecturer:
- Yves Schabes
- Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Cambridge, USA
Abstract
This tutorial will give an overview of the most recent parsing
technologies and their applications. The tutorial describes the main
algorithms and their applications for various classes of formalisms
such as finite state transducers for morphological analysis, finite
state grammars for part of speech disambiguation, local grammars for
noun-phrase spotting, and more traditional grammars such as
context-free grammars and lexicalized context-free grammars for higher
level applications. We will also illustrate how parsing technologies
have become more robust and accurate by accommodating both linguistic
description and statistical data.
Discussion of the design and implementation of a sample of useful
software will be featured.
- Title:
- Natural language generation
- at the Crossroads of Cognitive Science and Engineering
- Lecturer:
- Michael Zock
- Scientique Laboratoire d'Informatique pour la Mecanique
Abstract
Natural language generation is a dynamic field that lies at the
crossroads of various disciplines: linguistics, psychology, rhetorics,
computer science (to name just those). What is striking is the fact
that, despite its inherent interdisciplinarity, most scholars largely
ignore the work of the neighbouring disciplines.
The goal of this tutorial is twofold:
- make the non-specialist aware of the problems, potential and
achievements of this discipline,
- help to bridge the gap that still exists between the experts
of the different disciplines (e.g., linguists, psychologists,
computer scientists)
The following issues will be addressed :
- motivation of the research: Why is generation an important
research area?
- identification of the problems:Why is generation a difficult
task?
- achievements:What has been achieved? What methods have been
invented?
- evaluation: Which problems have been neglected?
- current issues in NL-generation: What areas are in the current
focus of interest?
The tutorial will be organized in a way similar to most generators:
we will start from deep generation (determination of content, planning
of text structure) and then move on to surface generation (lexical
choice, syntactic structure).
Special emphasis will be given to the fact that the problem of
natural language generation can only be solved in the realm of
cognitive science, that is, withing a framework where linguists,
psychologists and computer scientists meet and agree to work in
concert.
- Theme:
- Future Directions of MT -- Language, Meanings and Translation
- Lecturer:
- Jun'ichi Tsujii
- Professor of UMIST, UK
Abstract
The tutorial gives a summary of recent developments of various
paradigms of MT, including Linguistics-based MT, Knowledge-based MT,
Example-based MT and Statistics-based MT. The comparison of these
paradigms reveal different conceptions of the relationship between
translation and understanding which these paradigms maintain. The
turtorial also gives a thorough classification of difficulties actual
MT systems encounter and suggests possible ways of resolving them. It
also discusses possible MT architectures in which various MT paradigms
can properly be integrated.
- Theme:
- Corpus Based Natural Languge Processing
- Lecturer:
- Mitchell Marcus
- Professor of University of Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
A dramatic shift of research paradigm has taken place within NLP
during the past several years. Probabilistic and information-theoretic
techniques are increasingly being combined with traditional methods of
symbolic computing, automatically utilizing the implicit and explicit
lingustic information in newly-developed on-line corpora of both text
and transcribed speech. Many of these data bases add rich linguistic
annotation to corpora of natural language text. Already, these methods
have led to a dramatic improvement in the performance of a variety of
NLP systems. This tutorial will focus on these trends, surveying the
application of empirical corpus-based techniques to a range of
problems, including such areas as part of speech determination,
syntactic parsing, lexical semantics, and discourse structure. It
will also discuss the development of annotated corpora themselves.
- Theme:
- Towards Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces
- Lecturer:
- Mark Maybury
- MITRE, USA
Abstract
Multimedia communication is ubiquitous in daily life. When we
converse with one another, we utilize a wide array of media to
interact, including spoken language, gestures, and drawings. We
exploit multiple sensory systems or modes of communication including
vision, audition, and taction. Although humans have a natural
facility for managing and exploiting multiple input and output media,
computers do not. Consequently, providing machines with the ability
to interpret multimedia input and generate coordinated multimedia
output would be a valuable facility for a number of key application
such as information retrieval and analysis, training, and decision
support. This tutorial focuses specifically on those intelligent
interfaces that exploit multiple media and modes to facilitate
human-computer communication. The purpose of this tutorial is to
introduce the emerging literature and set of techniques for building
multimedia and multimodal interfaces, i.e., those interfaces that
interpret and generate multiple media, e.g., spoken and written
natural language, graphics, non-speech audio, maps, animation.
- Theme:
- Current Topics in Pragmatics
- Lecturer:
- Yorick Wilks
- Professor of University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
The tutorial will survey and discuss some recent developments in
pragmatics for natural language processing: in particular belief
representationa nd manipulation systems for modeling the comprehension
and generation of dialogue. We shall also discuss developments in the
segmentation and cohererence of discourse, and some attempts to model
phenomena such as lexical disambiguation and pronoun resolution within
such frameworks.
________________________________________________________________________
shimazu@atom.ntt.jp (Akira Shimazu)
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