The FINITE STRING Newsletter Announcements

Announcements For further information contact: Ms. Patti Oronzo Department of Computing Reviews Seeks Reviewers Box 2158 Yale Station Computing Reviews, the monthly review journal of Yale University the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), New Haven, Connecticut 06520 needs volunteer reviewers qualified to write critical (203) 436-0606 reviews of the current computer science literature. AJCL readers who are interested in receiving review Second International Conference on Data Bases assignments and in critically evaluating the important in the Humanities and Social Sciences books, papers, and other publications whose subject matter is common to both computer science and com- As a sequel to the meeting held at Dartmouth Col- putational linguistics are invited to contact: lege in 1979, the Faculty of Informatics of the Univer- sidad Politecnica de Madrid is organizing the Second Art Blum, Executive Editor International Conference on Data Bases in the Hu- Computing Reviews manities and Social Sciences to be held in Madrid on ACM June 16-19, 1980. The aims of the conference are to 1133 Avenue of the Americas provide an opportunity for professional contact and New York, New York 10036 discussion of a major interdisciplinary question: how (212) 265-6300 the redefinition of objectives and methods in the hu- manities and social sciences contributes to the ex- change of ideas and information among the humani- Second Annual Cognitive Science Meeting ties, social sciences, and computer science. An international conference sponsored by the Cog- The papers contributed reflect the range of princi- nitive Science Society will begin on Monday night, ples and methods currently adopted in essentially non- June 16, 1980, and run through Thursday morning, numerical data bases. Also represented are studies of June 19, on the campus of Yale University. The con- pedagogical applications, social implications, and po- ference will include major addresses, panel discussions, tential changes in these disciplines as a consequence of and short papers authored or sponsored by members their adoption of computer-based technology. Oppor- of the Society. tunity will be provided to demonstrate both local and The four major addresses will be: remote systems on the PDP-11. The Cultural Part of Cognition For further information contact: Roy D'Andrade, Anthropology, UC-San Diego Professor E. Garcia Camarero Segunda Conferencia International sobre Bases Some Problems with Ungenerated Language de Dates en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales Charles Fillmore, Linguistics, UC-Berkeley Facultad de Informatica The Geography of Conceptual Space Carretera de Valencia, Km. 7 John Ross, Linguistics, MIT Madrid-31, SPAIN Comparative Cognitive Science in Humans and Animals AISB-80 Conference in Amsterdam Thomas Bever, Psychology, Columbia AISB-80, the fourth conference to be organized by The three panel discussions will be: the Society for the Study of and Coherence in Conversation Simulation of Behaviour, will be held in Amsterdam, Roger Schank, Chairman July 1-4, 1980. Both long and short papers will be Gene Charniak, Wendy Lehnert, presented, and a conference proceedings will be pub- Ray Perrault, and Emmanuel Schegloff lished. Some of the papers to be presented are: Mental Imagery and Reading Allan Collins, Chairman Resolving Linguistic Ambiguities Robert Abelson, Wallace Chafe, B.K. Boguraev, Cambridge, England Stephen Kosslyn, and Allan Lesgold Analysing English Text: A Non-Deterministic Cognitive Science Methodology Approach with Limited Memory Earl Hunt, Chairman A.W.S. Cater, Cambridge, England William Brewer, Edward Feigenbaum, A Rather Intelligent Language Teacher Walter Kintsch, and S. Cerri and J. Breuker, Pisa, Italy

American Journal of Computational Linguistics, Volume 6, Number 2, April-June 1980 121 The FINITE STRING Newsletter Announcements

Automatic Analysis of Italian Another conference first is an Artificial Intelligence G. Ferrari, Pisa, Italy Trade Fair to be held in Stanford's Tresidder Union Some Problems in Early Noun Phrase Interpretation August 19-21. Leading AI research groups and manu- C.S. Mellish, Edinburgh, Scotland facturers will be demonstrating AI and other computer hardware and software. Principal AI book publishers Parsing English Text will also be invited to participate in the Trade Fair. A. Ramsay, Edinburgh, Scotland Conference and related inquiries should be directed Understanding English Descriptions of Programs to: A. Ramsay, Edinburgh, Scotland Louis G. Robinson An Algorithmic Account of English Main Clause AAAI 1980 Conference Coordinator Constructions M. Steedman, Warwick, England P.O. Box 3036 Questions about the conference should be ad- Stanford, California 94305 dressed to: Dr. Bob Wielinga Psychology Laboratory 1980 LISP Conference at Stanford Weerperplein 8 The 1980 LISP Conference, hosted by Stanford Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS University, will be held on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, California, August 24-27, 1980. Some topics to be included are language and theory, pro- First Annual National Conference gramming aspects, architecture, and applications. In on Artificial Intelligence addition to formal sessions, it is expected that there The First Annual National Conference on Artificial will be demonstrations, including LISP machines. Eve- Intelligence will be held at Stanford University, in Palo ning sessions may be established, and informal work- Alto, California, on August 19-21, 1980. The confer- shops will be encouraged. On Tuesday evening, Au- ence is sponsored by the American Association for gust 26, there will be a panel discussion on the topic Artificial Intelligence in cooperation with the Special "What is LISP?" Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence of the Associ- ation for Computing Machinery (ACM/SIGART). For further information contact: Topics will include knowledge representation, knowl- John R. Allen edge acquisition, cognitive modeling, problem solving Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and search, natural language, program synthesis and Stanford University understanding, AI languages and software, mathemati- Stanford, California 94305 cal and theoretical foundations, vision, robotics, theo- (415) 497-4971 rem proving, applications, specialized systems, and game playing. A one-day tutorial program exploring the current ACM "80 to be held in Nashville state of the art of artificial intelligence will be held on The Association for Computing Machinery will Monday, August 18. The tutorial program consists of hold its annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee, two full-day sessions and one evening session. The October 27-29, 1980. The conference will combine topics and lecturers for these tutorials are: an outstanding technical program with vendor exhibits Knowledge Engineering: of products and services which will come into general Tools and Techniques for AI Systems use during the '80's. These will be complemented with Dr. Mark Stefik, Xerox PARC a liberal seasoning of Nashville's principal product - Prof. Doug Lenat, Stanford University American music. The conference setting will be adja- Natural Language Understanding Systems cent to the Grand Ole Opry and to Opryland. Dr. Gary Hendrix, SRI International For further information contact: Prof. Wendy Lehnert, Yale University Charles L. Bradshaw Technology Watch: General Chairman An AI Tutorial for R&D Managers Box 1980, Station B Prof. Edward Feigenbaum, Stanford University Nashville, Tennessee 37235 Prof. , Carnegie-Mellon University

122 American Journal of Computational Linguistics, Volume 6, Number 2, April-June 1980 The FINITE STRING Newsletter Abstracts of Current Literature

Other Conferences The 1981 Office Automation Conference, sponsored by AFIPS, will be held in Houston, Texas, March 23- The Fifth Conference on Automated Deduction, or- 25, 1981. For further information contact: ganized by INRIA, will be held in Les Arcs, France, Ms. Carol Sturgeon July 8-11, 1980. For further information contact: AFIPS - OAC INRIA Suite 800 Service des Relations Ext6rieures 1815 North Lynn Street Domaine de Voluceau - Rocquencourt Arlington, Virginia 22209 B.P. 105 The Fifth International Conference on Computers 78150 Le Chesnay, FRANCE and the Humanities, sponsored by the Association for A workshop on Logic Programming and closely Computers and the Humanities, will be held in Ann related topics will be held July 14-16 in Budapest, Arbor, Michigan, in May 1981. For further informa- tion contact: sponsored by the yon Neumann computer science soci- ety. [See AJCL 6,1, pg. 53.] For further information Professor Joseph Raben contact: Computers and the Humanities Queens College, CUNY Sten-Ake T~irnlund Flushing, New York 11367 Department of Computer Science University of Stockholm 106 91 Stockholm, SWEDEN Abstracts of Current* Literature The Institute of Informatics of Warsaw University is organizing the First International Workshop on Natu- ral Communication with Computers, to take place Sep- Making Preferences More Active tember 9-12, 1980, in Warsaw, Poland. [See AJCL Yorick Wilks 6,1, pg. 52.] Further information can be obtained Department of Language and Linguistics University of Essex from the Workshop Secretariat: Wivenhoe Park Miss Ludmila R6zafiska Colchester C04 3SQ ENGLAND Institute of Informatics Artificial/nte//igence 11 (1978), 197-223. Warsaw University The paper discusses the incorporation of richer PKiN pok. 850 semantic structures into the Preference Semantics sys- 00-950 Warsaw, POLAND tem: they are called pseudo-texts and capture some- thing of the information expressed in one type of IFIP Congress "80, sponsored by IFIP, will be held frame proposed by Minsky (q.v.). However, they are in Kyoto, Japan, and Melbourne, Australia, October in a format, and subject to rules of inference, consist- 6-17, 1980. For further information contact: ent with earlier accounts of this system of language IFIP Congress '80 analysis and understanding. Their use is discussed in G.P.O. Box 880G connection with the phenomenon of extended use: sentences where the semantic preferences are broken. Melbourne, Victoria It is argued that such situations are the norm and not AUSTRALIA 3001 the exception in normal language use, and that a lan- An International Congress on Applied Systems Re- guage understanding system must give some general search and Cybernetics, sponsored by The School of treatment of them. A notion of sense projection is Computer Science, University of Windsor, and four proposed, leading on to an alteration of semantic for- mulas (word sense representations) in the face of societies, will be held in Acapulco, Mexico, December unexpected context by drawing information from the 12-15, 1980. The main theme of the Congress is pseudo texts. A possible implementation is described, "The quality of life and how to improve it." The Con- based on a new semantic parser for the Preference gress will include a session on Computers and the Hu- Semantics system, which would cope with extended manities. For further information contact: use by the methods suggested and answer questions Dr. George E. Lasker about the process of analysis itself. It is argued that Congress President this would be a good context in which to place alan- School of Computer Science University of Windsor * Editor's note: The abstracts in this issue are not as "current" as I would like, but, because we did not publish the Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4 CANADA Journal in 1979, there is still much material to get caught up on.

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