LINGUIST List 7.1150

Wed Aug 14 1996

FYI: A tool for computational semantics

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Holger Maier, CLEARS - educational and research tool for computational semantics

Hello. 

We want to introduce CLEARS, a freely available education and research
tool for computational semantics. From the feedback, we got so far
from initial presentations of CLEARS, we feel that this program might
be of interest for a wide audience.

Holger Maier
maiercoli.uni-sb.de


 CLEARS - An Education and Research Tool for Computational Semantics
 =====================================================================


 Holger Maier maiercoli.uni-sb.de
 David Milward milwardcam.sri.com
 Karsten Konrad konradcs.uni-sb.de
 Manfred Pinkal pinkalcoli.uni-sb.de



 WHAT IS CLEARS ?
 ----------------

 The CLEARS tool provides a graphical interface allowing 
 interactive construction of semantic representations in a variety of
 different formalisms, and using several construction methods.

 CLEARS (Computational Linguistics Education and Research for Semantics)
 was developed as part of the FraCaS project which was designed to 
 encourage convergence between different semantic formalisms, 
 such as Montague-Grammar, DRT, and Situation Semantics.

 As a tutorial tool, CLEARS allows students to investigate 
 various formalisms and their relationship. It can also be used
 to provide interactive demonstrations and to produce handouts.

 Because such a system has to be based largely on standard 
 routines and algorithms that are fundamental for the area of 
 computational semantics, a secondary aim of the project was 
 to provide a set of well documented programs which could form 
 the nucleus of a larger library of reusable code for this field. 
 This also makes it relatively easy for students and researchers 
 to add their own modules. 


 MAIN FEATURES OF CLEARS 
 -----------------------

 (1) TEACHING TOOL

 - Interactive Graphical Environment allowing: 
	 Step by Step Construction of Semantic Representations
	 Learning of Different Semantic Formalisms

 - High quality graphics for production of slides and handouts.


 (2) RESEARCH TOOL

 - Extendible System to plug in new Formalisms
 - Allows Translation and Comparison between Formalisms


 (3) LIBRARY

 - Fundamental Algorithms for Computational Semantics
 - Reusable Modules for other Applications


 (4) ARCHITECTURE

 - Code to be maximally shared
 - No generalisation to the worst case.
 - Similarities between formalisms and algorithms made 
	 explicit in the coding.


 (5) PARAMETERS

 a small selection: 

	 Semantic formalisms
	 Lambda-DRT, Intensional & Extensional Montague Grammar
	 Situation Semantics, Classic (TopDown) DRT

	 Grammar
	 DCG, Categorial Grammar, 
	 FeatureBased Grammar

	 Parser
	 DCG, Chart Parser, Incremental Parser





 AVAILABILITY OF THE SYSTEM
 --------------------------

 CLEARS is freely available. However you need

 - SICSTUS Prolog 3 (unfortunately commercial)
 - Tcl 7.4
 - Tk 4.0 (both freely available)


 You can get CLEARS on the WWW from the following address, which
 contains further documentation:

 http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~clears/clears.html

 or you can download it via ftp from

 ftp ftp.coli.uni-sb.de (134.96.68.11)

 cd /pub/fracas
 bin
 get CLEARS.tar.gz
 get README
 get userman.ps.gz



 FURTHER QUESTIONS
 -----------------

 In case of further questions, please mail to one of the authors 
 or to 
 clearscoli.uni-sb.de