Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
AIList Digest Volume 4 Issue 162
AIList Digest Monday, 7 Jul 1986 Volume 4 : Issue 162
Today's Topics:
Queries - Teaching CommonLisp & CPROLOG on VAX/VMS &
Architectures for Interactive Systems,
AI Tools - Scheme and CommonLisp
Philosophy & Brain Theory - Representationalist Perception,
Natural Language - References,
Journals - AI Expert
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed 2 Jul 86 09:40:53-PDT
From: Mark Richer <RICHER@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Teaching CommonLisp
Lisp Teachers (or previous learners),
I am interested in collecting comments regarding your experiences and
preferences with texts for teaching/learning Lisp. The implementation
available for the specific course I expect to be teaching is Golden
CommonLisp on an IBM-PC, in case you want to factor that into your
comments. You might want to think of this in the traditional way,
which book(s) would you make required, highly recommended, or
optional. Any other comments on teaching Lisp would be of interest.
The students in this class will range from undergraduates that are
novice programmers majoring in fields outside of CS, Math, or the
sciences to CS majors and possibly graduate students. This course is
not being taught in a Computer Science Department and little
constraints have been placed on me. Hands-on lab sessions are
possible as well as lectures.
Mark
------------------------------
Date: 3 Jul 86 13:37:00 EST
From: "CPT.GREG.ELDER" <elder@wpafb-info1.ARPA>
Reply-to: "CPT.GREG.ELDER" <elder@wpafb-info1.ARPA>
Subject: Help with CPROLOG on VAX/VMS
Please excuse me if this is not the appropriate list for this message.
I am looking for anyone running CPROLOG on a VAX under VMS 4.2. We
have a problem when typing CONTROL-C under CPROLOG to enter the debug
mode so as to be able to turn on tracing. If anyone has CPROLOG
running successfully on a VAX under VMS 4.2, I would appreciate
hearing from you.
Thanks.
Greg Elder
ARPA: elder@wpafb-info1
CSNET: gelder@wright
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 86 18:03:11 edt
From: brant%linc.cis.upenn.edu@CIS.UPENN.EDU
Subject: Architectures for interactive systems?
There seems to have been a great deal of work done in
natural language processing, yet so far I am unaware of
any attempt to build a practical yet theoretically well-
founded interactive system or an architecture for one.
When I use the phrase "practical yet theoretically well-
founded interactive system," I mean a system that a user
can interact with in natural language, that is capable of
some useful subset of intelligent interactive (question-
answering) behaviors, and that is not merely a clever hack.
Many of the sub-problems have been studied at least once.
Work has been done on various types of necessary response
behavior, such as clarification and misconception correction.
Work has been done on parsing, semantic interpretation, and
text generation, and other problems as well. But has any
work been done on putting all these ideas together in a
"real" system? I see a lot of research that concludes with
an implementation that solves only the stated problem, and
nothing else. Presumably, a "real user" will not want to
have to run system A to correct invalid plans, system B to
answer direct questions, system C to handle questions with
misconceptions, and so forth.
I would be interested to get any references to work on such
integrated systems. Also, what are people's opinions on this
subject: are practical NLP too hard to build now? Should we
leave the construction of practical systems to private enter-
prise and restrict ourselves to the basic research problems?
If we do so, how can we be sure we're actually making any
contribution at all?
Brant
====================
Brant Cheikes
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Pennsylvania
ARPA: brant@linc.cis.upenn.edu
CSNET: brant%upenn-linc@upenn
------------------------------
Date: Wed 2 Jul 86 09:26:53-PDT
From: Mark Richer <RICHER@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Scheme and CommonLisp
SCHEME and COMMONLISP
*********************
On June 10th, 1986 I sent out a request for feedback on the language Scheme.
In particular, I was interested in how appropriate the language would be
for a large-scale development effort in ICAI versus Commonlisp. Implicit
in this question are concerns about available implementations including
development environments, efficiency, compactness, ease of learning,
portability, etc. Below is a summary of comments. If you want to see the
whole file of messages (13) I will send it to you upon request.
Advantages of Scheme (compared to other Lisps including Commonlisp):
********************************************************************
Simple
Consistent
Small (easy to learn and can be implemented well on small, standard machines)
Elegant
Semantics of language are clean
Closures and lexical scoping are handled well
Migration to (i.e., learning) other dialects of Lisp should not be a problem
Portable (but someone has to have implemented it on the target machine)
Supports object-oriented programming and multiple processes
For above reasons, it is very appropriate for learners, especially if the
goal is to teach basic principles in computer science
A net address to reach experts: SCHEME-TEAM%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Advantages of Commonlisp
************************
Widely accepted standard
Large, growing user community
Lisp language development is concentrated on Commonlisp now
Best programming environments do/will support Commonlisp
Many built-in functions and features (overload beginner, but very useful)
Portable (obvious reasons to expect good implementations, compilers, etc.)
Commonlisp does require more memory than Scheme, but given the
increasing availability of inexpensive large memories that issue might
vanish.
There is a Commonlisp mailing list, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA. I assume
you need to contact Common-Lisp-Request@SU-AI.ARPA to get on the list,
unless you have access to it through a local bboard.
Other comments
--------------
Scheme IS a dialect of Lisp, an UnCommonLisp though.
Proust, an ICAI program, is implemented in T, a dialect of Scheme.
Ableson and Sussman's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs" (MIT Press, 1985) is highly recommended for everyone to read
and is also suggested as a text to teach computer science (Scheme is
the language used throughout the book).
------------------------------
Date: Wed 2 Jul 86 11:07:50-PDT
From: Pat Hayes <PHayes@SRI-KL>
Subject: Representationalist Perception
Mozes long review of Kelleys book "The Evidence of the Senses" tells one
a lot about the book. In particular, it sounds as though it makes the same
basic mistake about representations that many other 'anti-computationalist'
philosophers , including Gibson and his followers, make. The
'representatonalist' account of perception does NOT claim that instead of
perceiving the world, we perceive internal representations of the world.
That would indeed be a position with many difficulties. Rather, it says
that the WAY we perceive the world is BY making representations of it.
The data structures are, to put it simply, the output of the perceptual
process, not its input. The question the representational position must
face is how such things ( representations ) can serve as percepts in the
overall cognitive framework. While there are indeed many problems here,
the position is not as silly as Gibson thought it was.
Pat Hayes
------------------------------
Date: 1 Jul 86 14:08:00 PST
From: sefai@nwc-143b.ARPA
Reply-to: <sefai@nwc-143b.ARPA>
Subject: Natural Language References
As promised, the following is a list of references on Natural
Language. I'd like to thank all who contributed references as well as
suggestions. Before I can definitely commit to my topic, I need to
investigate work done by Harris and Wiley, Sager, and Winograd. Hopefully,
I'll nail this down before summer's end. Will keep you posted.
Gene Guglielmo
SEFAI@NWC-143B
China Lake, Ca.
.rA Ananiashviii, G.G.
.rA Mundzhishvii, Z.I.
.rA Bichashvii, N.N.
.rP Word Identification in a Natural Language in Interactive Systems
.rC Soobshch. Akad. Nauk. Gurzin. SSR
.rD 1984
.rA Boguraev, B.K.
.rA Jones, K.S.
.rP A Framework for Inference in Natural Language Front Ends to Databases
.rI University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
.rC Report No. 64
.rD 1985
.rA Brachman, Ron (ed)
.rA Levesque, Hector (ed)
.rB Readings in Knowledge Representation
.rI Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
.rW Palo Alto, California
.rD 1986
.rA Briggs, R.
.rP Transcendental Semantic Primitives for Natural Language Processing
.rI Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, NASA Ames
Research Center
.rC RIACS Techical Report TR 85.14
.rW Moffett Field, California
.rD 1985
.rA Damerau, F.J.
.rP An Interactive Customization Program for a Natural Language Database
Query System
.rI IBM Research Division
.rC Report No. 10411
.rD 1984
.rA Damerau, F.J.
.rP Problems and Some Solutions in Customization of Natural Language Data
Base Front Ends
.rI IBM Research Division
.rC Report No. 10872
.rD 1984
.rA Dyer, M.G.
.rB In-Depth Understanding: A Computer Model of Integrated Processing
for Narrative Comprehension
.rI MIT Press
.rW Cambridge, Massachusetts
.rD 1986
.rA Enomoto, H.
.rP TELL: a Natural Language Based Software Development System
.rI Institute for New Generation Computer Technology
.rC Report No. 67
.rD 1984
.rA Findler, Nicholas V. (ed)
.rB Associative Networks: Representation and Use of Knowledge by Computers
.rI Academic Press
.rW NY
.rD 1983
.rA Frederking, R.E.
.rP Syntax and Semantics in natural Language Parsers
.rI Carnegie-Melon University
.rC Department of Computer Science
.rC Report No. 85-133
.rD 1985
.rA Harris, M.D.
.rB Introduction to Natural Language Processing
.rA Harris, Z.
.rA Wiley
.rB A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles
.rD 1984
.rA Ibragimov, T.I.
.rB Cybernetics and Natural Languages
.rA Jacobs, P.S.
.rP PHRED: A Generator for Natural Language Interfaces
.rI University of California
.rC Berkeley Computer Science Division
.rC Report No. 85-198
.rD 1985
.rA Johnson, D.E.
.rP Design of a Robust, Portable Natural Language Interface Grammar
.rI IBM Research Division
.rC Report NO. 10867
.rD 1984
.rA Johnson, T.
.rB Natural Language Computing: The Commercial Applications
.rI Ovum Limited
.rW London
.rA Kalita, J.K.
.rP Generating Summary Responses to Natural Language Database
.rI University of Saskatchewan
.rC Report No. 84-9
.rD 1984
.rA Kandrirody, A.
.rA Kapur, D.
.rA Narendran, P.
.rB An Ideal-Theoretic Approach to Word Problems and Unification Problems
over Finitely Presented Commutative Algebras
.rA Karpen, J.L
.rP The Digitized Word: Orality, Literacy, and the Computerization of
Language
.rC Ph.D. thesis
.rI Bowling Green State University
.rW Bowling Green, Ohio
.rD 1984
.rA Marcus, M.P.
.rB A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural Language
.rI MIT Press
.rW Cambridge, Massachusetts
.rD 1985
.rA Mays, E.
.rP A Modal Temporal Logic for Reasoning About Changing Database with
Applications to Natural Language Question Answering
.rI Unviersity of Pennsylvania
.rC Moore School of Electrical Engineering
.rC Department of Computer Science
.rC Report No. 85-01
.rD 1985
.rA Michalski, R.S.
.rA Carbonell, J.G.
.rA Mitchell, T.M.
.rB Machine Learning; An Artificial Intelligence Approach, Volume II
.rI Morgan kaufman Publishers, Inc.
.rW Palo Alto, California
.rD 1986
.rA Neuamnn, B.
.rP Natural Language Descriptions of TIme-Varying Scenes
.rI Universitaet Hamburg.
.rC Fachbereich Informatik
.rC Report NO. 105
.rD 1984
.rA Orlowska, E.
.rP The Montague Formalization of Natural Language
.rI Polish Academy of Sciences
.rC Institute of Computer Sciences
.rC Report No. 105
.rD 1984
.rA Petrick, S.R.
.rP Natural Language Database Query Systems
.rI IBM Research Division
.rC Report No. 10508
.rD 1984
.rA Rau, L.F.
.rP The Understanding and Generation of Ellipses in a Natural Language
Systems.
.rI University of California Berkeley
.rC Computer Science Division
.rC Report No. 85-227
.rD 1984
.rA Sager, Naomi
.rB Natural Language Information Processing
.rI Addison-Wesley
.rW Reading
.rA Saint-Dizier, P.
.rP An Approach to natural Language Semantics in Logic Programming
.rI Institute National de Recherce en Informatique et en Automatique
.rC Report NO. 389
.rA Salton
.rA McGill
.rB Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval
.rA Schank, R.C (ed)
.rA Colby, K.M. (ed)
.rB Computer Models of Thought and Language
.rI W.H.Freeman and Company
.rW San Francisco
.rD 1973
.rA Schank, R.C.
.rB Conceptual Information Processing
.rI Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.
.rW Amsterdam
.rD 1984
.rA Schank, R.C.
.rA Childers, P.G.
.rB The Cognitive Computer
.rI Addison-Wesley
.rW Reading
.rD 1984
.rA Schieber, Stuart M.
.rP An Introduction to Unification-based Approaches to Grammar
.rI University of Chicago Press
.rC CSLI Lecture Note Series
.rD 1986
.rA Sowa, John F.
.rB Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine
.rP Addison-Wesley
.rW Reading
.rD 1984
.rA VanRijsbergen
.rB Information Retrieval, 2nd Edition
.rA Winograd, Terry
.rB Language as a Cognitive Process, Volume 1: Syntax
.rI Addison-Wesley
.rW Reading
.rD 1983
.rP Large-Dictionary, On-Line Recognition of Spoken Words
.rI Helsinki University of Technology
.rC PB84-214246/CAO
.rD 1983
.rB Natural Language Processing: A Knowledge Engineering Approach
.rL 0-8476-7358-8
------------------------------
Date: Sat 5 Jul 86 13:07:49-CDT
From: CMP.BARC@R20.UTEXAS.EDU
Subject: AI Expert
Since the new "AI Expert" magazine was given such a glowing review, I thought
the ensuing raft of potential subscribers might be interested that they can do
a bit better than the $27 yearly subscription rate (which includes the premier
and 12 other issues). Recent issues of its sister publication "Computer
Language" include savings certificates that offer the 13-issue package for
$22.
Dallas Webster
CMP.BARC@R20.UTexas.Edu
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
********************
