LINGUIST List 2.526

Tue 17 Sep 1991

Confs: Computational Ling, Lang Development

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1. "Judith Klavans", New York Area Computational Linguistics Symposium
2. BU Conference on Language Development, please post / conference reminder

 NEW YORK AREA COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS SEMINAR
NYACLS is starting its second year of seminars on issues in computational
linguistics. In view of last year's experience with bi-monthly sessions
each comprising two talks, we have decided to alter our format. This year
we will experiment with monthly seminars devoted to a single talk. We
hope this framework will facilitate more extensive and lively discussion
of each paper. It will also provide the opportunity for more regular
contact among participants. We will continue to meet at the
CUNY Graduate Center on Tuesday afternoons, as this
seems to be the time and location acceptable to the largest number of our
participants. If you are interested in presenting a talk in either
the fall or the spring series, please let us know.
The first two talks in our program are as follows.
1. October 8, 2:00 P.M.-4:00 P.M.
 CUNY Graduate Center, 33 West 42 Street, New York, Room 1400
 Mark Steedman, Univeristy of Pennsylvania, Grammar, Intonation, and
 "Focus": A Theory of "Phonological Form"
 (see abstract below)
2. November 5, 2:00 P.M.-4:00 P.M.
 CUNY Graduate Center, Room 1400
 Janet Fodor, CUNY Graduate Center, A Parsing Algorithm for Processing
 Phrase Structure Grammar
 (abstract to follow in the next announcement)
For further information and/or proposals for talks, please send e-mail
to Shalom Lappin (LAPPINWATSON.IBM.COM) or David Johnson
(JOHNSONWATSON.IBM.COM).
 Mark Steedman
 University of Pennsylvania
 Grammar, Intonation, and "Focus": a Theory of "Phonological Form"
 The paper will extend earlier work on the relation of
intonation structure, grammar, and discourse information.
The earlier work
(cf. Language, 1991) makes the claim that intonation structure,
surface structure, and discourse information structure (in the sense
of the division of semantic information into a "theme" or "topic",
and a "rheme" or "comment") are isomorphic, under the radically
generalised notion of surface structure entailed by the "combinatory
categorial" theory of grammar. The present paper shows that the claim
also holds for the further (independent) distinction between
discourse information that is "given" or "background", and "new" or
"focus" (in one sense of that much-abused term). The paper concludes
by arguing for a redistribution of grammatical
responsibilities across certain modules of the theory of grammar,
including
transfer of all responsibility for unbounded dependency and coordinate
structure to the module of "phonological form".

 *** Reminder ***
 October 8 is the pre-registration deadline for:
 =========
 The Boston University Conference on Language Development
 October 18-20, 1991
Keynote Speaker: Steven Pinker, MIT
Saturday Evening Speaker: Neil Smith, University College London
The conference program, information about discounted air fares and
hotels, and a pre-registration form will be sent automatically via
e-mail to anyone who sends a message to:
 infolouis-xiv.bu.edu
For other information, please write to langconflouis-xiv.bu.edu
or BU Conference on Language Development, 138 Mountfort Street,
Boston, MA 02215, or phone 617-353-3085.