In this paper we present one aspect of our presents a clear case of where general as well as specific research on machine translation (MT): defining the re- real world knowledge should assist in eliminating inap- lation between the interlingua (IL) and a knowledge representation (KR) within an MT system. Our interest lies in the translation of natural language (NL) sentences where the "message" contains a spatial relation in particular, where the sentence conveys information about the location or path of physical entities in the real, physical world. We explore several arguments for clarifying the source of constraints on the particular IL structures needed to translate these sentences.

We present a system for the incremental interpretation of natural-language utterances in context. The main goal of the work is to account for the influences of context on interpretation, while preserving compositionality to the extent possible. To achieve this goal, we introduce a representational device, conditional interpretations, and a rule system for constructing them. Conditional interpretations represent the potential contributions of phrases to the interpretation of an utterance. The rules specify how phrase interpretations are combined and how they are elaborated with respect to context. The control structure defined by the rules determines the points in the interpretation process at which sufficient information becomes available to carry out specific inferential interpretation steps, such as determining the plausibility of particular referential connections or modifier attachments. We have implemented these ideas in Candide, a system for interactive acquisition of procedural ...

This paper investigates the incorporation of a non-procedural theory of phonology into HPSG, based on the 'one-level' model of Bird & Ellison (1992). The standard rule-representation distinction is replaced by the description-object distinction which is more germane in the context of constraint-based grammar. Prosodic domains, which limit the applicability of phonological constraints, are expressed in a prosodic type hierarchy modelled on HPSG'S lexical type hierarchy. Interactions between phonology and morphology and between phonology and syntax are discussed and exemplified I

An important requirement of advanced temporal applications is the ability to deal with definite, indefinite, finite and infinite temporal information. There is currently no database model which offers this functionality in a single unified framework. We argue that the combination of relational databases and temporal constraints offers a powerful framework which addresses these needs. In this thesis we develop the foundations of a theory of temporal constraint databases and indefinite temporal constraint databases. At first, we study a hierarchy of parameterized database models: ML -relational databases, L-constraint databases and indefinite L-constraint databases. The language L, the parameter, defines the constraint vocabulary and ML is the structure over which L-constraints will be interpreted. The models of temporal constraint databases and indefinite temporal constraint databases can then be studied as instances of the last two of the above parameterized models. In the course of...

The are two main approaches to the representation of meaning in Computational Linguistics: a symbolic approach and a distributional approach. This paper considers the fundamental question of how these approaches might be combined. The proposal is to adapt a method from the Cognitive Science literature, in which symbolic and connectionist representations are combined using tensor products. Possible applications of this method for language processing are described. Finally, a potentially fruitful link between Quantum Mechanics, Computational Linguistics, and other related areas such as Information Retrieval and Machine Learning, is proposed.

We have argued elsewhere that first order inference can be made more efficient by using non-standard syntax for first order logic. In this paper we define a syntax for first order logic based on the structure of natural language under Montague semantics. We show that, for a certain fairly expressive fragment of this language, satisfiability is polynomial time decidable. The polynomial time decision procedure can be used as a subroutine in general purpose inference systems and seems to be more powerful than analogous procedures based on either classical or taxonomic syntax.

Model of Task Processing : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 7 1.3.2 Developing a Theory on the Role of Language : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8 1.3.3 Producing and Using Expectation : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 9 1.3.4 Development of the Theory of Mixed-Initiative Dialog : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10 1.4 Dissertation Overview : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10 2 Related Work 12 2.1 Dialog Systems : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 12 2.1.1 Requirements : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 12 2.1.2 Portability : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 12 2.1.3 Question-Answer Systems : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 13 2.1.4 Miscellaneous Systems : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :...

Abstract not found

The cognitive function of mental images with respect to the referential aspect of language is examined and used in the listener model ANTLIMA of the natural language system SOCCER. An operational realization of the reference relation used to recognize instances of spatial concepts in the results of a vision system and also to visualize locative expressions is presented and compared to A. Herskovits ' analysis of the semantics of spatial prepositions.

In this paper we demonstrate that a broad class of higher-order functional programs can be transformed into semantically equivalent multidimensional intensional programs that contain only nullary variable definitions. The proposed algorithm systematically eliminates user-defined functions from the source program, by appropriately introducing context manipulation (i.e. intensional) operators. The transformation takes place in M steps, where M is the order of the initial functional program. During each step the order of the program is reduced by one, and the final outcome of the algorithm is an M-dimensional intensional program of order zero. As the resulting intensional code can be executed in a purely tagged-dataflow way, the proposed approach offers a promising new technique for the implementation of higher-order functional languages. 1