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Book Reviews Cognitive : An Introduction

For instance, for a direct causal relationship, once the COGNITIVE SCIENCE: AN INTRODUCTION simple sentences that express the ACT and RESULT have been chosen, the choice of syntactic structure, the Neil A. Stiilings; Mark H. Feinstein; Jay L. Garfield; ordering of , and the number of sentences Edwina L. Rissland; David A. Rosenbaum; Steven E. still remain. Moreover, not all combinations of these Weisler:; and Lynne Baker-Ward choices yield acceptable texts. The discourse grammar (Hampshire College and University of Massachusetts, encodes the acceptable choice combinations for the Amherst, MA) semantic relationship. The MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, MA Thus, in order to build a generation which is 1987, xvii+533 pp. able to handle some particular semantic relation, one ISBN 0-262-19257-8, $25.00 (hb) must first do a detailed linguistic analysis to find the simple sentences that could be used to convey the Reviewed by information (and encode this in the lexicon grammar), Helen M. Gigley and next do another linguistic analysis to see how these National Science Foundation simple sentences can be combined, ordered, and syn- tactically presented so as to convey the semantic rela- The study of cognitive science in modern terms is an tionship (and encode this in the discourse grammar). emerging field and the term itself evokes many discus- Once the analysis has been done, the generation system sions regarding its nature. For instance, what are criti- can use these two grammars to do generation. It is the cal aspects of its study, and to what degree can certain case, however, that the two grammars encode choices traditional disciplines contribute? Given these facts, that are mutually dependent. Thus a choice in one will this book makes a significant contribution to providing limit the available choices in the other. The priority of a basic overview of current cognitive science. But I am these decisions can only be determined within a partic- not reviewing it strictly for its contribution to the study ular domain. In applying this generation model to several of cognitive science. Instead, I am reviewing it here as domains, Danlos is extremely thorough and insightful. it might be used for an introduction to natural While one would hope that the domain dependence processing (NLP) or to issues which are relevant to that Danlos advocates is not necessary, her analysis is computational . The attempt will be to focus quite convincing. Throughout the book she points out only on issues that are related to language and its areas where "general principles" used by others must processing. However, since there are areas where the actually be operationalized in a very domain-dependent separation of language and in general are fashion. Thus the usefulness of such principles is called impossible, there will be some related description of the into question. cognitive discussions. In all I found the book to be most interesting. As a The overall presentation of the material is at a level scientist I found the book's linguistic analysis that is easily accessible to students unfamiliar with the very helpful. It forced me to look at generation fi'om a problems raised. Specifically, for persons beginning the new point of view. I would expect that linguists will study of language as a part of cognition, including its have a similar reaction because of the book's strong acquisition, its processing, and aspects of its commitment to processing. I believe that Danlos has base, I find the discussions very adequate in most been able to successfully straddle the fence that lies respects. Because the chapters are individually between these two fields. In doing so, she has made a authored, there is some disparity in style and type of real contribution to both. information contained, but for most chapters this can be overtooked. Kathleen McCoy is an assistant professor at the University of Delaware working in the areas of natural language generation, First, I will raise some problems that I found with the discourse, and correcting misconceptions. McCoy's address text that might influence its selection. Of critical import is: Department of Computer and Information , Uni- to a book such as this is a chapter that attempts to versity of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. E-mail: integrate what has been presented separately. This is [email protected] lacking here and I feel is a serious omission. Having one final chapter that pulls together the threads of common- ality that have been described throughout is very im- portant for new students in a field. Even having suitable pointers between chapters as cross-reference to where another viewpoint of the same problem is presented would be helpful. This also is not done; the reader is left to infer such relationships. Without significant guidance from someone who is knowledgeable across several of the disciplines, seeing the parallel and interrelated re- search efforts is not a trivial task, but is necessary to fully grasp the problems faced in cognitive science

116 Computational Linguistics, Volume 14, Number 3, September 1988 Book Reviews Cognitive Science: An Introduction study. This overall integration is also directly relevant For students lacking exposure to computational issues, to the study of language and, I feel, computational they provide an extremely good basic introduction to linguistics in particular. the problems involved in developing a computational Now with regard to some pickier points, let me counterpart to any theory. The introductory remarks illustrate where more cross-talk among the authors may relating AI to the other fields of cognitive science more have helped. It appears that the authors of "Architec- than adequately cover the issues. ture of the " (Chapter 2) and the AI chapters In contrast, the chapter on (Chapter 8) I (Chapters 4 and 5) did not comment or read each other's find to be of little relevance to natural language issues as contributions. In Chapter 2 the following statement they might be integrated within either an NLP course or appears without any further expansion: one on computational linguistics. This is due to the style Anderson (1983) proposes a representation for procedural of the chapter as well as the fact that many philosoph- knowledge called a production system and provides a ical issues that are more directly related to natural much more detailed theory of how goal-directed behavior language (i.e., truth conditions, possible world seman- can be maintained than we have been able to provide tics, predicate , and so on) are described in an here. (p. 60) excellent presentation in the chapter on There is no reference to the development of a produc- (Chapter 10). Perhaps this is another instance where the tion system theory by Newell and Simon (1972) among presentations would have been enhanced by cross-talk. others (cf. Chapter 1 of Anderson (1983)). The work of I believe that philosophical issues of language are a very Newell and Simon is raised in the context of their critical part of any understanding of natural language general problem-solving approach (GPS) in Chapter 4, processing as well as computational linguistics in gen- but there is no mention there of the fact that they also eral, but find the particular presentation here lacking in defined a production system as one way developing a suitable relationship to either. In using this of effectively computing solutions to their problem- book as a text, I would probably skip this chapter. solving strategy. Furthermore, examples and full dis- The chapter on (Chapter 7), which cussion of a production system control are presented in many might consider tangential to NLP, however, is Chapter 4 without any reference to either of these very well done. It is clearly presented and provides works. Given the chronology of the original production quite a comprehensive overview of neurofunctioning. system work, this cross-reference omission, as clearly There are many examples and the discussions are shown by the Anderson text, demonstrates where intuitive and clearly depict some critical issues that are cross-chapter talk would have benefitted this volume. important in an introductory text. There seems to be a Another instance where a similar situation arises is in minor problem in the discussion of aphasia, though, and dealing with the spreading activation paradigm, which that is the definition of conduction aphasia where com- was first defined as a access and representation prehension is noted as being impaired (p. 294), whereas device by an AI researcher, Quillian (1968). This para- several noteworthy references in the study of aphasia digm is described as being developed by Collins and characterize it as good to excellent (cf. Goodglass and Loftus (1975) and others (Chapter 3) and yet their work Kaplan 1983, 1972, Kertesz 1979). Perhaps this is just an references Quillian's throughout. There is only one brief error in proofreading. statement in the AI chapter that mentions Quillian's The breadth of exposure to language issues and significant contribution. related study that is contained in this text is excellent This lack of cross-chapter integration, which I feel to for the most part, but the one chapter (Chapter 11) be especially relevant for new students of language specific to natural language processing is the weakest. processing--computationally or otherwise, as well as When reading the title of the chapter, "Natural Lan- for cognitive scientists--requires having a suitable guage Processing", I immediately of computa- source of outside information. Again I will state that it tional approaches to NLP (my bias); but they are given could have been handled either by inclusion of pointers little emphasis. Within the computational approaches to related work or a concluding overview chapter. included, there seems to be an inordinate amount of Now, specifically to the issue of the possible use of credit given to computational approaches using scripts this text as an introduction to NLP or to computational or frames to the exclusion of other significant ap- linguistics, I feel that the book is an excellent beginning proaches to NLP. in spite of the issues just discussed. It covers many The NLP chapter does mention Winograd's SHRDLU basic issues of language from viewpoints emphasizing model (1972) and briefly describes what is achieved. linguistic theory through those dealing with perfor- However, the import of its development in the historical mance. It defines many basic necessary to perspective of when it was done is lost. After finishing define language processes and provides adequate exam- this chapter, it seems that the only relevant computa- ples and discussion of them. tional work in NLP was done by the group working The chapters on AI are extremely well written and under Schank or within the scripts and frames ap- concise. They give a clear introduction to problems proaches. While these have had an impact on some within AI independently of the problems being tackled. approaches to NLP, I do not think they should be

Computational Linguistics, Volume 14, Number 3, September 1988 117 Book Reviews Machine Translation: Past, Present, Future presented as the only significant computational contri- Woods, W.i~. 1970 Transition Network Grammars for Natural Lan- butions. There is no discussion of processing as it is guage Arlalysis. Communications of the ACM 13(10): 591-606. Woods, W. A.; Bates, M.; Brown, G.; Bruce, B.; Cook, C.; Klovstad, defined computationally. There is no mention of proc- J.; Mal@oul, J.; Nash-Webber, B.; Schwartz, R.; Wolf, J.; and essing concerns that require integration of some of the Zue, V. 1976 Understanding --Final Report. issues raised in other chapters (Chapters 2, 4, and 5), Technic~'.l Report 3438, Volume 4, Bolt Beranek and Newman, such as the knowledge base necessary for natural lan- Inc. guage processing and the fact that one must consider Helen Gigley's areas of interest include computational linguis- what control structures or procedures must be in place tics and , artificial and neurophy- to process language. These issues are never related to siology, and neural-based cognitive modeling. She received a language as a process. Ph.D. in in 1982 from the University of The emphasis is on more psycholinguistically moti- Massachusetts, Amherst. Gigley's address is National Sci- ence Foundation, 1800 G St., NW, Rm. 304, Washington, DC vated approaches and perhaps that is why the compu- 20550. E-mail: [email protected] tational aspects included are biased to only include those which emphasize meaning representations as scripts and schemas while ignoring all other computa- MACHINE TRANSLATION: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. tional approaches. Computational language processing approaches that are omitted range from the ATN work William John Hutchins of Woods (1970) to the ARPA projects of the mid-'70s University of East Anglia) (HWlM, Woods et al. 1976, HEARSAY-II, Erman et al. (Ellis Horwood Series in and their 1980). These are the biggest omissions and limit the use Applications) of this text to introduce natural language processing or Ellis Horwood: Chichester, 1986, 382 pp. to form a basis for a computational linguistics course. ISBN 0-85312-788-3, $49.95 (hb) However, one can supplement this by using the discus- sion of language processing in a suitable introductory AI Reviewed by text such as Barr and Feigenbaum (1981). Richard Kittredge In conclusion, this book is an excellent attempt to Universit( de Montreal and Odyssey Research Asso- present aspects of cognitive science from within disci- ciates plines that are each approaching its study. For introduc- tory NLP or computational linguistic study, I would use Most computational linguists are probably aware that this at least as a supplementary text. I know of no other machine translation (MT) has provided the impetus for equally broad and comprehensive source of material a number of important advances in linguistics and that is relevant to language study from so many per- computing over the past 40 years. But even those who spectives. Given the above-stated problems, I would have worked on MT could not have fully appreciated also be prepared to supplement the book in ways the breadth, depth and impact of MT activity around the previously discussed. This is especially critical to the globe before reading Hutchins's book Machine Trans- issues of natural language processing and to integrating lation: Past, Present, Future. For most of us, I think, its viewpoints of the same problem across the discussion. publication has come as a very pleasant and welcome surprise for a number of . First, the recent reawakening of interest in MT worldwide calls for a REFERENCES balanced historical overview of the approaches used and the experience gained to date. Hutchins's volume Anderson, J.R. 1983 The Architecture of Cognition, Harvard Univer- helps satisfy this need for a critical collective conscious- sity Press, Cambridge, MA. ness, and sets a high standard for future works of this Barr, A. and Feigenbaum, E.A. 1981 The Handbook of Artificial nature. Intelligence 1, William Kaufmann, Inc. Collins, A.M. and Loftus, E.F. 1975 A Spreading Activation Theory Second, Hutchins's thorough treatment of the his- of Semantic Processing. Psychological Review 82(6): 4(17--428. tory of MT is interspersed with short summaries of the Erman, L.D., Hayes-Roth, F., Lesser, V.R., and Reddy, D.R. 1980 technical problems and approaches in linguistic analysis The HEARSAY-II speech-understanding system: Integrating and natural language processing as they have related to knowledge to resolve uncertainty. Computing Surveys 12: 213- MT. The result is a very readable and even entertaining 253. Goodglass, H. and Kaplan, E. 1983 The Assessment of Aphasia and book, which can serve as an introduction to the field for Related Disorders (2nd ed.). Lea and Febiger. a wide audience including not only translators, linguists, Kertesz, A. 1979 Aphasia and Associated Disorders: Taxonomy, and computer scientists, but also the general (techni- Localization, and Recovery. Grune and Stratton. cally literate) public. The students in my graduate MT Newell, A. and Simon, H.A. 1972 Human . Prentice- seminar, for example, have found it the most useful Hail, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. single book on the subject. Quillian, M.R. 1968 . In M. Minsky (ed.), Semantic . MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Third, it satisfies the long-standing need for a good Winograd, T. 1972 Understanding Natural Language. Academic single-volume reference on MT. Its detailed and cross- Press, New York, NY. referenced description of virtually all known MT

118 Computational Linguistics, Volume 14, Number 3, September 1988