Harry Bunt

The DenK-architecture : a fundamental approach to user-interfaces

In this paper we present the basic principles underlying the DenK-system, a generic cooperative interface combining linguistic and visual interaction. The system integrates results from fundamental research in knowledge representation, communication, natural language semantics and pragmatics, and object-oriented animation. Our design incorporates a cooperative and knowledgeable electronic assistant that communicates with a user in natural language, and an application domain, which is presented visually. The assistant, that we call thecooperator, has an information state that is represented in a rich form of Type Theory, a formalism that enables us to model the inherent cognitive dynamics of a dialogue participant. Pragmatic issues in man-machine interaction, concerning the use of natural language and knowledge in cooperative communication, are central to our approach.

New developments in parsing technology

New Developments in Parsing Technology is a collection of papers based on contributions to the International Workshop on Parsing Technology in the years 2000 and 2001. The publication formatof acollection might raisethefollowing questions: Isthe whole ofthe collection more than the sum of its previously published parts by virtue of an inspired selection of the most seminal papers in the area? Or does the collection go beyond a mere reprint of revised versions of workshop papers by including insightful overview articles or other previously unpublished material? In case of New Developments in Pars- ing Technology the answers to these questions are yes concerning added value by the inclusion of a previously unpublished invited talk by Michael Collins, and no concern- ing exceeding the sum of its previously published parts. Table 1 lists the table of contents of the book. The book starts out with an introduc- tory chapter written by the editors. In this article, the editors motivate an interest in parsing technology by listing 12 application areas that make crucial use of parsing tech- niques. Given the limited pool of candidate papers from two workshops, unfortunately

Advances in Probabilistic and Other Parsing Technologies

List of Figures. List of Tables. Acknowledgements. 1. New Parsing Technologies H. Bunt, A. Nijholt. 2. Encoding Frequency Information in Lexicalized Grammars J. Carroll, D. Weir. 3. Bilexical Grammars and Their Cubic-Time Parsing Algorithms J. Eisner. 4. Probabilistic Feature Grammars J. Goodman. 5. Probabilistic GLR Parsing K. Inui, et al. 6. Probabilistic Parsing Using Left Corner Language Models C. Manning, B. Carpenter. 7. A New Parsing Method Using a Global Association Table J. Yoon, et al. 8. Towards a Reduced Commitment, D-Theory Style TAG Parser J. Chen, K. Vijay-Shanker. 9. Probabilistic Parse Selection Based on Semantic Co-occurrences E. Hektoen. 10. Message-Passing Protocols for Object-Oriented Parsing U. Hahn, et al. 11. SuperTagging for Partial Parsing. 12. Regular Approximation of CFLs: A Grammatical View M.-J. Nederhof. 13. Parsing By Successive Approximation H. Schmid. Index.

Multimodal Cooperation with the DENK System

In this chapter we present the DenK project, a long-term effort where the aim is to build a generic cooperative human-computer interface combining multiple input and output modalities. We discuss the view on human-computer interaction that underlies the project and the emerging DenK system. The project integrates results from fundamental research in knowledge representation, communication, natural language semantics and pragmatics, and object-oriented animation. Central stage in the project is occupied by the design of a cooperative and knowledge-able electronic assistant that communicates in natural language and that has internal access to an application domain which is presented visually to the user. The assistant, that we call the Cooperative Assistant, has an information state that is represented in a rich form of type theory, a formalism that enables us to model the inherent cognitive dynamics of a dialogue participant. This formalism is used both for modeling domain knowledge, for representing the current dialogue context, and for implementing a context-change theory of communication.

Measuring annotator agreement in a complex hierarchical dialogue act annotation scheme

We present a first analysis of inter-annotator agreement for the DIT++ tagset of dialogue acts, a comprehensive, layered, multidimensional set of 86 tags. Within a dimension or a layer, subsets of tags are often hierarchically organised. We argue that especially for such highly structured annotation schemes the well-known kappa statistic is not an adequate measure of inter-annotator agreement. Instead, we propose a statistic that takes the structural properties of the tagset into account, and we discuss the application of this statistic in an annotation experiment. The experiment shows promising agreement scores for most dimensions in the tagset and provides useful insights into the usability of the annotation scheme, but also indicates that several additional factors influence annotator agreement. We finally suggest that the proposed approach for measuring agreement per dimension can be a good basis for measuring annotator agreement over the dimensions of a multidimensional annotation scheme.

Cooperative Multimodal Communication

There are obvious ways in which text and diagrams within a document should be coordinated: for instance, the placement of a diagram might influence the wording of the text. However, there is a more subtle interaction between text and diagrams, which has emerged from work on generating technical documents that make extensive use of layout. Constituents that would normally be classified as textual may contain diagrammatic features (e.g., when multiple indenting is used); conversely, non-pictorial diagrams usually contain short strings of text (e.g., labels within boxes). We argue that text and diagrams really lie on a continuum, and that for generating documents of this kind we need a descriptive framework that combines linguistic and graphical features in the same representation.

SEMANTIC UNDERSPECIFICATION: WHICH TECHNIQUE FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

In recent years a variety of representation formalisms have been proposed that support the construction of underspecified semantic representations, such as Quasi-Logical Form, Underspecified Logical Form, Underspecified Discourse Representation Theory, Minimal Recursion Semantics, Ontological Promiscuity, Hole Semantics, the Constraint Language for Lambda Structures, and Normal Dominance Constraints. These formalisms support methods of underspecification which sometimes seem very different but in fact have similar underlying concepts, and in other cases appear deceptively similar, using the same terminology but with different interpretations. UDRT and Normal Dominance Constraints, for example, at first blush seem quite different but upon closer inspection have much in common; on the other hand, the term ‘metavariable’ is used by different authors to refer to different concepts in different underspecification formalisms. Recent studies have produced interesting results about the relative expressive capabilities of some of these formalisms. Koller (2004) has for instance shown that under certain conditions the underspecified representations of Hole Semantics can be translated into normal dominance constraints, and vice versa. Ebert (2005) has shown that the most prominent underspecification formalisms for the representation of scopal phenomena all suffer from lack of expressive power. This paper aims at contributing to the understanding of the merits of the various underspecification formalisms by considering what different underspecification techniques have to offer for dealing with a range of phenomena that motivate the use of underspecified semantic representations.

Fusion and Coordination for Multimodal Interactive Information Presentation

Users require more effective and efficient means of interaction with increasingly complex information and new interactive devices. This document summarizes the results of the international Dagstuhl Seminar on Coordination and Fusion in Multimodal Interaction that took place at Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany October 27 through November 2, 2001. We first outline a research roadmap in the near and long term. Next we describe requirements and an abstract architecture for this class of systems. We then detail requirements for semantic representations and languages necessary to enable these systems. Finally, we describe data, annotation methodologies and tools necessary to further advance the field. We conclude with a recommended action plan for forward progress in the community.

The independence of dimensions in multidimensional dialogue act annotation

This paper presents empirical evidence for the orthogonality of the DIT++ multidimensional dialogue act annotation scheme, showing that the ten dimensions of communication which underlie this scheme are addressed independently in natural dialogue.

A Hierarchical Unification of LIRICS and VerbNet Semantic Roles

This research compares several of the thematic roles of Verb Net (VN) to those of the Linguistic Infrastructure for Interoperable Resources and Systems (LIRICS). The purpose of this comparison is to develop a standard set of thematic roles that would be suited to a variety of natural language processing (NLP) applications. We draw from both resources to construct a unified set of semantic roles that will replace existing VN semantic roles. Through the process of comparison, we find that a hierarchical organization of coarse-grained, intermediate and fine-grained roles facilitates mapping between semantic resources of differing granularity and allows for flexibility in how VN can be used for diverse NLP applications, thus, we propose a hierarchical taxonomy of the unified role set. The comparison and subsequent development of the hierarchy reveals a level of granularity shared by both resources, which could be further developed into a standard set of thematic roles for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).