[Ltg] HAIL/SALS-SIG Seminar (3rd September): Professor Bonnie Webber, University of Edinburgh

[Andrew Lampert]

                      H.A.I.L. Seminar series
                          CSIRO ICT Centre
                   http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/

                                AND

                              SALS-SIG
        Sydney Area Language and Speech Special Interest Group
            http://www.clt.mq.edu.au/Events/SALS-SIG.html


Title:          Discourse Grammar from a Lexical Perspective

Speaker:        Professor Bonnie Webber
                Professor of Intelligent Systems
                School of Informatics
                University of Edinburgh

                *** NOTE UNUSUAL SEMINAR DAY ***

Date:           Friday 3rd September 2004 at 11am

Location:       CSIRO Conference Room,
                Building E6B, Macquarie University.

                NOTE: Due to construction work access to the CSIRO ICT Centre
                in Building E6B has changed.

                See http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/location.htm for details.

Video:          If you can't make it to the seminar, you can request
                to have it video-recorded (if the speaker agrees).
                Prior to the seminar, send us an email with your name,
                postal address and the author/title of the seminar you
                want to be recorded.

                Video recordings are available in Windows Media format
                on CD-ROM or VHS (please send a blank VHS tape).

Abstract

To date, the greatest successes for Language Technology (LT) have been based on words and word-level techniques. Since discourse requires attention to so much more than words, is it therefore beyond the scope, hopes and promises of LT?  This talk suggests that it is not, arguing that the lexicon provides a robust basis for low-level discourse grammar.

I start by reviewing some previous proposals regarding discourse structure and discourse grammar, and then describe a lexicalised discourse grammar modelled on Lexicalised Tree-Adjoining Grammar. What is attractive about this approach from a linguistic perspective, is the range of examples it is able to explain.

On the other hand, interesting examples are not necessarily common examples. So to provide empirical grounding for such work on discourse, I am working with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania on what we currently call the "Penn Discourse TreeBank" (http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/~pdtb/). I will conclude by the talk by describing proposed features of this resource and its current state.


Short resume

Bonnie Webber received her PhD from Harvard University and taught at the University of Pennsylvania (Department of Computer & Information Science) for 20 years before joining the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where she is currently a professor and deputy Head of School.

She has carried out and supervised research on Question Answering (starting with BBN's LUNAR system in the early 70's), discourse phenomena (starting with her PhD thesis on discourse anaphora), animation from instructions, medical decision support systems and (more recently) bioinformatics. She has recently published papers in the journals COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS and COGNITIVE SCIENCE, with a new paper to appear in the JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS.



----------------------------------------
The HAIL Seminars' URL:
http://www.ict.csiro.au/HAIL/

Contacts:       Andrew Lampert
Address:        CSIRO HAIL Seminars,
                c/o Andrew Lampert,
                Locked Bag 17,
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Phone:  (02) 9325 3100
Email:  Andrew.Lampert at csiro.au



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