IRList Digest Thursday, 26 November 1987 Volume 3 : Issue 43 Today's Topics: Discussion - Research on library catalogs and IR - Research on library catalogs with extended Boolean logic CSLI - Profiles of visitors to CSLI News addresses are Internet or CSNET: fox@vtcs1.cs.vt.edu BITNET: fox@vtcs1.bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Oct 87 11:06:59 CST From: JEFF HUESTIS Subject: RE: RE: LEXICON DEVELOPMENT [Note: This is a continuation of some discussion with Jeff Huestis from earlier IRList issues. Jeff has the opportunity to do experiments with real online catalog data, and so I thought it might be of interest to IRList readers to consider how "advanced" retrieval methods might be tested there, and to suggest what studies could be done with the data that is accumulating. I think that is enough background to get you into the context of the discussion. - Ed] I don't have the Brown corpus either, although "we could get it", I suppose. What I have (or "had", since I haven't seen it lately) is a dittoed sheet of the 400 most common words, that Dillon passed out in the first, introductory, programming course I took from him when I was still a graduate student in linguistics. I had somebody key that sheet into machine-readable form when I was up at Michigan Tech. [Now discussing idea of research project ... - Ed] ... When we talk about more commitment of people resources or extensions to our hardware environment then ... I need to think in terms of at least a ... grant, or alternatively, I need to find ... something "interesting" also contributes to our support for library operations (I've done a good deal of that). On the other hand, if you want to talk about an intelligent front-end that could interface with VTLS and/or NOTIS, extensible to other systems (say other library systems as well as database searching utilities), possibly in a distributed framework oriented toward the OSI "Linked Systems" project that LC, RLIN, et al, are involved in, then some place ... might be willing to [provide funds] ... Foundations that give money to libraries are a lot like venture capitalists investing in expert systems. [Note: Well, any comments? See next note too. - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Oct 87 16:16:10 CST From: JEFF HUESTIS Subject: A WEIGHTY MATTER I got started thinking about "angles" this morning while waiting for recovery from a disk crash, and started looking at your "Extended boolean information retrieval" paper. I noticed the location beside your name under the title--Ibadan--and was surprised to discover you're an old Third World hand; there aren't too many in this business. I did a stint in Nepal, back in '72-'73. In fact, that is where I got interested in linguistics, which led to libraries and computers. [Note: I have heard that the agricultural community is doing some interesting work with CDROM database, and is trying to use SGML for some of the international centers. - Ed] The general idea of extending boolean with other techniques may be a good "angle" ... The arguments put forward in yours and other articles about the shortcomings of basic boolean, and ways in which it might be improved, may be useful in arguing against acquisition of a system that we can't modify. [Note: we have done some testing here with extended Boolean retrieval on a large library catalog. Preliminary information should come out in an article that I expect to appear in "Information Services and Use" in 1988 - Ed] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Nov 87 17:08:28 PST From: emma Subject: CSLI Calendar, November 5, 3:6 [Extract - Ed] [Note: I thought it might be of interest to find out about visitors to CSLI and their work. - Ed] CURRENT VISITORS SYLVAIN BROMBERGER Professor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dates of visit: September 1987--July 1988 Bromberger is currently interested in the philosophy of linguistics and in rational acquisition of knowledge. In the philosophy of linguistics he is working on conceptual issues arising in phonology/phonetics. Under rational acquisition of knowledge he is interested in the limits that constrain search for knowledge guided by questions and in the semantics of interrogatives. He is a regular participant of the RATAG project. KEITH DEVLIN Reader in Mathematics Department of Mathematics University of Lancaster Dates of visit: September 1987--August 1988 Devlin is a mathematical logician. About three years ago, his interest in set theory gave way (via a brief passage through computer science) to a desire to work out a genuine, mathematical theory of information. He thought that the approach to this problem adopted by Barwise and his colleagues at CSLI was the best way to proceed, and has subsequently thrown his lot in with this gang. He is presently writing a book on situation theory. CARL GINET Chair, Sage School of Philosophy Cornell University Dates of visit: June--December 1987 Ginet is a philosopher on sabbatic leave from Cornell. During his stay at CSLI, he will be finishing a book on action, catching up on the literature in epistemology, and refining software he has written that guides students in constructing derivations in formal logic. KIYONG LEE Department of English Korea University Dates of visit: December 1986--December 1987 Lee is visiting CSLI on a senior research grant from the Korean-American Educational Commission and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. He hopes to acquaint himself with new developments in situation theory and semantics, and to write an introductory book for Korean readers. While working on some foundational aspects of situation theory, he is very much interested in testing its adequacy in treating some concrete problems, especially those related to negation, quantification, and tense/aspect in Korean. He is participating in the STASS project while he is here and also continues developing a computationally tractable, functor-driven, phrase structure grammar of natural language by amalgamating a categorial grammar with HPSG. SALLY MCCONNELL-Ginet Professor Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics Cornell University Dates of visit: June--December 1987 During her time at CSLI (the first half of a year's sabbatic leave from Cornell), McConnell-Ginet will be working on a book about formal approaches to the analysis of vagueness. She will also be working on a semantics text for linguistics that she and Gennaro Chierchia are coauthoring. HIDEYUKI NAKASHIMA Senior Researcher Man-Machine Systems Section Electrotechnical Laboratory Dates of visit: September 1987--August 1988 Nakashima is interested in knowledge representation, reasoning, and learning. He is also interested in a model of language acquisition. He has his own knowledge-representation system based on logic programming, called Uranus. He is planning to create a programming language based on situation theory. RONALD NASH Dates of visit: January 1987--July 1988 Nash is at CSLI on a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is interested in the philosophy of mind and normative psychology, and is particularly interested in the work of CSLI's RATAG and DIA projects with respect to the cognitive theory of emotion on which he has recently worked. He hopes to construct a more formal model while he is here, and will be looking at the various formal models being considered at CSLI. KASPER OSTERBYE Institute of Electronical Systems, Aalborg University of Aarhus Dates of visit: September 1986--September 1987 Osterbye's recent work has been on programming languages, especially dealing with interactive higher-level debugging. At CSLI, he is participating in the SDL project. GORDON PLOTKIN Professor Department of Computer Science University of Edinburgh Dates of visit: September 1987--October 1988 Plotkin is interested generally in issues of language and logic and particularly in the modeling and formalization of situation theory and in learning situation semantics. He is also interested in a variety of issues in the denotational semantics of programming languages, such as concurrency and probabilistic computation, and also in a usefully implementable general proof theory. He is an active participant in the STASS project. BILL ROUNDS Associate Professor Department of Computer Science University of Michigan Dates of visit: September 1987--June 1988 Rounds is a computer scientist interested in mathematical and computational linguistics. He is developing logics for expressing grammars and for understanding grammatical properties, with special emphasis on unification-based grammatical systems. These logics can also be used directly in implementations of such systems. He is participating in the MOST project at CSLI. HIROYUKI SUZUKI Researcher Systems Tokyo Research Department Corporate Engineering Division Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.,Ltd. Dates of visit: September 1986--March 1988 Suzuki's main interest lies in building Japanese dialog systems. He is currently interested in designing a representation language for a computer as a participant of conversations, and clarifying strategies for generating sentences that are employed by human beings to keep conversations coherent. SYUN TUTIYA Associate Professor Department of Philosophy Faculty of Letters Chiba University Dates of visit: November 1986--September 1988 Tutiya is interested in the development of speech acts theory within the framework of situation theory and situation semantics. He is also interested in quantification in Japanese, in Frege and the history of logic after him, and has been translating `Situations and Attitudes' into Japanese. He is an active participant in the STASS project. SUSON YOO Doctoral Candidate and Instructor Department of Linguistics Korea University Dates of visit: March 1987--February 1988 Yoo is continuing her work with Kiyong Lee, currently at CSLI, and is especially interested in learning more about situation theory and unification grammar and investigating their universal ramifications by testing their linguistic significance and computational applicability to the analysis of Korean. LOTFI ZADEH Professor Department of Computer Science University of California, Berkeley Dates of visit: Fall Quarter 1987 Zadeh developed "fuzzy" logic and set theory---the central idea being that truth or membership in a set isn't simply binary, but permits a continuum of values. He has attended many CSLI functions over the past four years, especially on Thursdays, and we are pleased that he has arranged to be here several days a week during fall quarter. ------------------------------ END OF IRList Digest ********************