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Showing papers on "Natural language published in 1985"


Journal ArticleDOI
01 Dec 1985-Language
TL;DR: Language learnability and language devlopment revisited the acquisition theory - assumptions and postulates phrase structure rules phrase stucture rules - developmental considerations inflection complementation and control auxiliaries lexical entries and lexical rules.

2,005 citations


Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: A finding that challenges several traditional and widespread views on meaning and natural language, with far-reaching implications: adequate theories of truth and reference cannot bypass the cognitive space-construction process, and standard linguistic arguments for hidden structural levels are invalidated.
Abstract: This book offers a highly original, integrated treatment of issues that play a central role in linguistic semantics, philosophy of language, and cognitive approaches to meaning.It is based on the idea that expressions of language are not interpreted directly via truth conditions; rather, at a certain cognitive level they help to build up mental spaces, internally structured and linked to one another. Because the construction of spaces is typically underdetermined by the expressions, simple principles yield multiple possibilities and apparently complex ambiguities.Focusing on the mental constructions that can be associated with expressions rather than merely on the expressions themselves, Fauconnier reveals a general, uniform, and elegant organization that is responsible for superficially diverse and complex phenomena. A finding that challenges several traditional and widespread views on meaning and natural language, with far-reaching implications: adequate theories of truth and reference cannot bypass the cognitive space-construction process, and standard linguistic arguments for hidden structural levels are invalidated.Gilles Fauconnier is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Paris VIII.A Bradford Book.

1,267 citations


Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: An explicit computational model of language acquisition is presented which can actually learn rules of English syntax given a sequence of grammatical, but otherwise unprepared, sentences and demonstrates how constraints that may be reasonably assumed to aid sentence processing also aid language acquisition.
Abstract: This landmark work in computational linguistics is of great importance both theoretically and practically because it shows that much of English grammar can be learned by a simple program.The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge investigates the central questions of human and machine cognition: How do people learn language? How can we get a machine to learn language? It first presents an explicit computational model of language acquisition which can actually learn rules of English syntax given a sequence of grammatical, but otherwise unprepared, sentences.It shows that natural languages are designed to be easily learned and easily processed-an exciting breakthrough from the point of view of artificial intelligence and the design of expert systems because it shows how extensive knowledge might be acquired automatically, without outside intervention. Computationally, the book demonstrates how constraints that may be reasonably assumed to aid sentence processing also aid language acquisition.Chapters in the book's second part apply computational methods to the general problem of developmental growth, particularly the thorny problem of the interaction between innate genetic endowment and environmental input, with the intent of uncovering the constraints on the acquisition of syntactic knowledge. A number of "mini-theories" of learning are incorporated in this study of syntax with results that should appeal to a wide range of scholarly interests. These include how lexical categories, phonological rule systems, and phrase structure rules are learned; the role of semantic-syntactic interaction in language acquisition; how a "parameter setting" model may be formalized as a learning procedure; how multiple constraints (from syntax, thematic knowledge, or phrase structure) interact to aid acquisition; how transformational-type rules may be learned; and, the role of lexical ambiguity in language acquisition.Robert Berwick is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge is sixteenth in the Artificial Intelligence Series, edited by Patrick Winston and Michael Brady.

686 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In searching for universal constraints on the class of natural languages, linguists have investigated a number of formal properties, including that of context-freeness, which is interpreted strongly and weakly both as a way of characterizing structure sets and even weakly for characterizing string sets.
Abstract: In searching for universal constraints on the class of natural languages, linguists have investigated a number of formal properties, including that of context-freeness. Soon after Chomsky’s categorization of languages into his well-known hierarchy (Chomsky, 1963), the common conception of the context-free class of languages as a tool for describing natural languages was that it was too restrictive a class — interpreted strongly (as a way of characterizing structure sets) and even weakly (as a way of characterizing string sets).

638 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work describes a parallel model for the representation of context and of the priming of concepts in a natural language processing system with modular knowledge sources but strongly interactive processing.

484 citations


Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: One of recommendation of the book that you need to read is shown, which is a kind of precious book written by an experienced author and it will show the reasonable reasons why you should read this book.
Abstract: Any books that you read, no matter how you got the sentences that have been read from the books, surely they will give you goodness. But, we will show you one of recommendation of the book that you need to read. This efficient parsing for natural language is what we surely mean. We will show you the reasonable reasons why you need to read this book. This book is a kind of precious book written by an experienced author.

387 citations


Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: This book is an investigation into the problems of generating natural language utterances to satisfy specific goals in the speaker's mind and is thus an ambitious and significant contribution to research on language generation in artificial intelligence.
Abstract: From the Publisher: This book is an investigation into the problems of generating natural language utterances to satisfy specific goals in the speaker's mind. It is thus an ambitious and significant contribution to research on language generation in artificial intelligence.

371 citations


Book
27 Nov 1985
TL;DR: An extension of classical set theory, Ensemble Theory, is defined and this provides the conceptual basis of a framework for the analysis of natural language meaning which Dr Bunt calls Two-level model-theoretic semantics.
Abstract: 'Mass terms', words like water, rice and traffic, have proved very difficult to accommodate in any theory of meaning since, unlike count nouns such as house or dog, they cannot be viewed as part of a logical set and differ in their grammatical properties. In this study, motivated by the need to design a computer program for understanding natural language utterances incorporating mass terms, Harry Bunt provides a thorough analysis of the problem and offers an original and detailed solution. An extension of classical set theory, Ensemble Theory, is defined, and this provides the conceptual basis of a framework for the analysis of natural language meaning which Dr Bunt calls Two-level model-theoretic semantics. The validity of the framework is convincingly demonstrated by the formal analysis of a fragment of English including sentences with quantified and modified mass terms. Separate chapters of the book are devoted to an axiomatic definition of Ensemble Theory and a detailed discussion of its status as a mathematical formalism.

266 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper presented a computational model of discourse strategies that can be used to guide the generation process in its decisions about what to say next and showed how this model has been implemented in text, a system which generates paragraph-length responses to questions about database structure.

254 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article reported a study on the English language use of native speakers of Arabic and Japanese in three task conditions: completing a written grammar test, participating in an oral interview, and narrating a story to a listener.
Abstract: It has been claimed that as second langue learners perform different tasks at a single point in time, their production of some grammatical, morphological, and phonological forms will vary in a predictable manner This article reports a study on the English language use of native speakers of Arabic and Japanese in three task conditions: completing a written grammar test, participating in an oral interview, and narrating a story to a listener Results of the study provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the utterances of second language learners show systematic variability in some morphological and grammatical forms, a variability related to task The study shows that the performance of second language learners on a written grammar test varies from their performance when attempting to communicate orally, in some cases, grammatical accuracy is much better in spontaneous oral communication than in scores on a written grammar test The study shows that more than two styles arc evidenced when learners perform more than two tasks, and that when those tasks are ordered in terms of degree of attention to language form required, the styles produced by learners in response to those tasks may be ranged along a continuous dimension

Journal ArticleDOI
Stephen E. Levinson1
01 Nov 1985
TL;DR: It is speculated that these mathematical principles constitute a powerful theory of speech that can be reconciled with and elucidate conventional linguistic theories while being used to build truly competent mechanical speech recognizers.
Abstract: The past decade has witnessed substantial progress toward the goal of constructing a machine capable of understanding colloquial discourse. Central to this progress has been the development and application of mathematical methods that permit modeling the speech signal as a complex code with several coexisting levels of structure. The most successful of these are "template matching," stochastic modeling, and probabilistic parsing. The manifestation of common themes such as dynamic programming and finite-state descriptions accentuates a superficial likeness amongst the methods which is often mistaken for the deeper similarity arising from their shared Bayesian foundation. In this paper, we outline the mathematical bases of these methods, invariant metrics, hidden Markov chains, and formal grammars, respectively. We then recount and briefly interpret the results of experiments in speech recognition to which the various methods were applied. Since these mathematical principles seem to bear little resemblance to traditional linguistic characterizations of speech, the success of the experiments is occasionally attributed, even by their authors, merely to excellent engineering. We conclude by speculating that, quite to the contrary, these methods actually constitute a powerful theory of speech that can be reconciled with and elucidate conventional linguistic theories while being used to build truly competent mechanical speech recognizers.

Book ChapterDOI
Christopher Culy1
TL;DR: The weak generative capacity of the vocabulary of Bambara is studied, and it is shown that the vocabulary is not context free.
Abstract: In this paper I look at the possibility of considering the vocabulary of a natural language as a sort of language itself. In particular, I study the weak generative capacity of the vocabulary of Bambara, and show that the vocabulary is not context free. This result has important ramifications for the theory of syntax of natural language.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article demonstrates how language views can be adopted into an information systems context and distinguishes here between five language views: denotational, generative, cognitive, behavioristic, and interactionist.
Abstract: This article demonstrates how language views can be adopted into an information systems context. We distinguish here between five language views: denotational, generative, cognitive, behavioristic, and interactionist. These views differ in their assumptions about he origin of linguistic behavior, the primary functions of language, elements of language, and the nature of linguistic knowledge. Information system development approaches can be characterized by their underlying language views. This explains great differences in development methods and research. Thus, language views have implications and should be chosen continency for a given information system context.



Book
01 Oct 1985
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the acquisition of a bilingual child from a sociolinguistic perspective to age ten to read a book, which is not obligation and force for everybody.
Abstract: Spend your few moment to read a book even only few pages. Reading book is not obligation and force for everybody. When you don't want to read, you can get punishment from the publisher. Read a book becomes a choice of your different characteristics. Many people with reading habit will always be enjoyable to read, or on the contrary. For some reasons, this language acquisition of a bilingual child a sociolinguistic perspective to age ten tends to be the representative book in this website.

Proceedings Article
18 Aug 1985
TL;DR: A natural language system which improves its own performance through learning and is able to acquire, from a single narrative, a new schema for a stereotypical set of actions.
Abstract: This paper describes a natural language system which improves its own performance through learning. The system processes short English narratives and is able to acquire, from a single narrative, a new schema for a stereotypical set of actions. During the understanding process, the system attempts to construct explanations for characters' actions in terms of the goals their actions were meant to achieve. When the system observes that a character has achieved an interesting goal in a novel way, it generalizes the set of actions they used to achieve this goal into a new schema. The generalization process is a knowledge-based analysis of the causal structure of the narrative which removes unnecessary details while maintaining the validity of the causal explanation. The resulting generalized set of actions is then stored as a new schema and used by the system to correctly process narratives which were previously beyond its capabilities.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
08 Jul 1985
TL;DR: It is argued that the mechanisms for structure-sharing not only provide the ability to express important linguistic generalization about the lexicon, but also make possible an efficient, readily modifiable implementation that is quite adequate for continuing development of a large natural language system.
Abstract: The lexicon now plays a central role in our implementation of a Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), given the massive relocation into the lexicon of linguistic information that was carried by the phrase structure rules in the old GPSG system. HPSG's grammar contains fewer than twenty (very general) rules; its predecessor required over 350 to achieve roughly the same coverage. This simplification of the grammar is made possible by an enrichment of the structure and content of lexical entries, using both inheritance mechanisms and lexical rules to represent the linguistic information in a general and efficient form. We will argue that our mechanisms for structure-sharing not only provide the ability to express important linguistic generalization about the lexicon, but also make possible an efficient, readily modifiable implementation that we find quite adequate for continuing development of a large natural language system.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
08 Jul 1985
TL;DR: The basis of a theory of communication from a formal theory of rational interaction is derived, and it is shown to distinguish insincere or nonserious imperatives from true requests.
Abstract: This paper derives the basis of a theory of communication from a formal theory of rational interaction. The major result is a demonstration that illocutionary acts need not be primitive, and need not be recognized. As a test case. we derive Searle's conditions on requesting from principles of rationality coupled with a Gricean theory of imperatives. The theory is shown to distinguish insincere or nonserious imperatives from true requests. Extensions to indirect speech acts, and ramifications for natural language systems are also briefly discussed.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The author tries to show how folk labels of speech acts and speech genres characteristic of a given language reflect salient features of the culture associated with that language, and how the use of the proposed semantic metalanguage, derived from natural language, helps to achieve the desired double goal of insight and rigor in this area of study.
Abstract: This paper discusses a number of speech acts and speech genres from English, Polish, and Japanese, approaching them through the words which name them. It is claimed that folk names of speech acts and speech genres are culture-specific and provide an important source of insight into communicative routines most characteristic of a given society; and that to fully exploit this source one must carry out a rigorous semantic analysis of such names and express the results of this analysis in a culture-independent semantic metalanguage. The author proposes such a metalanguage and illustrates her approach with numerous detailed semantic analyses. She suggests that analyses of speech acts and speech genres carried out in terms of English folk labels are ethnocentric and unsuitable for crosscultural comparison. She tries to show how folk labels of speech acts and speech genres characteristic of a given language reflect salient features of the culture associated with that language, and how the use of the proposed semantic metalanguage, derived from natural language, helps to achieve the desired double goal of insight and rigor in this area of study. (Speech acts, speech genres, semantics, lexicography, language and culture)

Proceedings Article
21 Aug 1985
TL;DR: The implementation of SECSI, an expert system for database design written in Prolog, generates a specific semantic network portraying the application and completes and simplifies the semantic network up to reach flat normalized relations.
Abstract: In this paper, we report on the implementation of SECSI, an expert system for database design written in Prolog. Starting from an application description given with either a subset of the natural language, or a formal language, or a graphical interface, the system generates a specific semantic network portraying the application. Then, using a set of design rules, it completes and simplifies the semantic network up to reach flat normalized relations. All the design is interactively done with the end-user. The system is evolutive in the sense that it also offers an interactive interface which allows the database design expert to modify or add design rules.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the design and results of a field evaluation of a natural language system-NLS-used for data retrieval, as well as its application in data mining.
Abstract: Although a large number of natural language database interfaces have been developed, there have been few empirical studies of their practical usefulness. This paper presents the design and results of a field evaluation of a natural language system-NLS-used for data retrieval.

Book ChapterDOI
TL;DR: As the generation component of a natural language interface, PHRED affords extensibility, simplicity, and processing speed, and its design incorporates a cognitive motivation as well.
Abstract: PHRED (PHRasal English Diction is a natural language generator designed for use in a variety of domains. It was constructed to share a knowledge base with PHRAN (PHRasal ANalyzer) as part of a real-time user-friendly interface. The knowledge base consists of pattern-concept pairs, i.e., associations between linguistic structures and conceptual templates. Using this knowledge base, PHRED produces appropriate and grammatical natural language output from a conceptual representation.PHRED and PHRAN are currently used as central components of the user interface to the UNIX Consultant System (UC). This system answers questions and solves problems related to the UNIX 3 operating system. UC passes the conceptual form of its responses, usually either questions or answers to questions, to the PHRED generator, which expresses them in the user's language. Currently the consultant can answer questions and produce its responses in either English or Spanish.There are a number of practical advantages to PHRED as the generation component of a natural language system. Having a knowledge base shared between analyzer and generator eliminates the redundancy of having separate grammars and lexicons for input and output. It avoids possibly awkward inconsistencies caused by such a separation, and allows for interchangeable interfaces, such as the English and Spanish versions of the UC interface.The phrasal approach to language processing realized in PHRED has proven helpful in generation as in analysis. PHRED commands the use of idioms, grammatical constructions, and canned phrases without a specialized mechanism or data structure. This is accomplished without restricting the ability of the generator to utilize more general linguistic knowledge.As the generation component of a natural language interface, PHRED affords extensibility, simplicity, and processing speed. Its design incorporates a cognitive motivation as well. It diverges from the traditional computational approach by focusing on the use of specialized phrasal knowledge. This phrasal approach minimizes the autonomy of the individual word, the bane of some earlier approaches to language processing. The two-stage process used by PHRED to select appropriate linguistic structures also fits well with cognitive theories of language and memory.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Jun 1985
TL;DR: ADAM is described, an integrated Advanced Design AutoMation system, with focus on the knowledge-based synthesis subsystem, which includes a number of design activities and utilities, and a unified, multidimensional, hierarchical design representation.
Abstract: This paper describes ADAM, an integrated Advanced Design AutoMation system, with focus on the knowledge-based synthesis subsystem. Working parts of this subsystem include a number of design activities and utilities, and a unified, multidimensional, hierarchical design representation. Two aspects of the synthesis subsystem are described in detail: the design planner and the natural language interface. The planner builds a plan for synthesis and analysis activities, drawing inferences from a knowledge base represented by a semantic net. The natural language interface accepts system-level behavioral specifications. Both of these packages are currently being implemented.

Book
01 Jan 1985
TL;DR: The 32 papers in this collection (all but one previously unpublished) discuss attitude to the English language, its varieties, and its usages as discussed by the authors, and discuss attitudes towards the English Language and its use.
Abstract: This book contains the 32 papers in this collection (all but one previously unpublished) discuss attitude to the English language, its varieties, and its usages.

Book
Timothy Johnson1
01 Sep 1985
TL;DR: The computer industry is in the early stages of a revolution, its capability for processing natural languages will advance dramatically over the next few years, and computer systems which deal with human language will begin to play a central role in the industry.
Abstract: The computer industry is in the early stages of a revolution. Its capability for processing natural languages will advance dramatically over the next few years. As a result, computer systems which deal with human language will begin to play a central role in the industry. Computers will becooome significantly more accessible to many people, and many tasks which are wholly manual will be handled electronically.



Journal ArticleDOI
Fred J. Damerau1
TL;DR: This paper discusses procedures that affect the reader, the lexicon, the lowest level of grammar rules, the semantic interpreter, and the output formatter that will make it possible for database administrators to generate robust English interfaces to particular databases without help from linguistic experts.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with some of the issues arising in the development of a domain-independent English interface to IBM SQL-based program products. The TQA system falls into the class of multilayered natural language processing systems. As a result, there is a large number of potential points at which customization to a particular database can be done. Of these, we discuss procedures that affect the reader, the lexicon, the lowest level of grammar rules, the semantic interpreter, and the output formatter. Our tests lead us to believe that the approach we are taking will make it possible for database administrators to generate robust English interfaces to particular databases without help from linguistic experts.