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+ | Next Boston Lisp Meeting: Monday November 24th 2008 at 1800 at MIT 34-401B | ||
+ | Gregory Marton will give a talk about the meanings of English words as programs. | ||
+ | http://fare.livejournal.com/136992.html | ||
+ | Gregory will introduce a way of thinking about the meanings of English | ||
+ | words as programs (c.f. SHRDLU), cast the problem of language learning | ||
+ | as a search through the space of possible programs, and show first | ||
+ | steps in learning. Gregory has created a system called Sepia that | ||
+ | makes it relatively easy to write small lexicons that implement some | ||
+ | semantic theory for a domain. Applications that Gregory and several | ||
+ | colleagues have had fun with include: | ||
+ | |||
+ | * understanding dates and times and other measures: "next Wednesday" | ||
+ | * finding and linking names of people, organizations, places | ||
+ | * telling a robot what to do with stuff on a table: "touch the red one" | ||
+ | * asking about spatial paths in video: "show people entering the kitchen" | ||
+ | * a toy gossip world: "John loves Mary" "Who does not hate Mary?" | ||
+ | * a little number theory: "18 is twice the sum of its digits" | ||
+ | |||
+ | These applications are inherently brittle, and manual construction | ||
+ | gets harder as the application grows. The research goal is to | ||
+ | construct new meaning programs with little human input, or with input | ||
+ | from non-programmers. Given a problem phrase, Sepia uses standard ways | ||
+ | to find similar words that it knows. Its current approach is to take | ||
+ | the meanings of those words and makes small changes, looking for a | ||
+ | combination that produces the target meaning. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Both the system as a whole and the language of semantics are | ||
+ | implemented in the GNU/Guile flavor of Scheme. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Gregory Marton is a PhD student in computer science at MIT, and this | ||
+ | is his dissertation topic. His first language is Hungarian, and since | ||
+ | meeting English at age eight, he has wondered about meanings and how | ||
+ | to learn language. He has a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in | ||
+ | Linguistics from the University of Maryland, College Park, 1999. | ||
+ | |||
+ | * | ||
+ | |||
+ | The Lisp Meeting will take place on Monday November 24th 2008 at 1800 | ||
+ | (6pm) at MIT, Room 34-401B. | ||
+ | |||
+ | As the numbers indicate, this is in Building 34, on the 4th floor. | ||
+ | This is the usual location, on 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge. | ||
+ | |||
+ | MIT map: http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?selection=34 | ||
+ | |||
+ | Google map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=50+Vassar+St,+Cambridge,+MA+02139,+USA | ||
+ | |||
+ | Many thanks go to Alexey Radul for arranging for the room, and to MIT | ||
+ | for welcoming us. | ||
+ | |||
+ | * * | ||
+ | |||
+ | Buffet: ITA Software, a fine employer of Lisp hackers (disclosure: I | ||
+ | work there), is kindly purchasing a buffet to accompany our Monthly | ||
+ | Boston Lisp Meeting. Anyone who attends is welcome to partake. We | ||
+ | appreciate it if you let us know you're coming, and what food taboos | ||
+ | you have, so that we can order the right amount of food. Tell us by | ||
+ | sending email to boston-lisp-meeting-register at common-lisp.net. We | ||
+ | won't send any acknowledgment unless requested; importantly, we'll | ||
+ | keep your identity and address confidential and won't communicate any | ||
+ | such information to anyone, not even to our sponsors. | ||
+ | |||
+ | * * * | ||
+ | |||
+ | The previous Boston Lisp Meeting on October 27th had over 30 | ||
+ | participants. Tim McNerney gave copious background on the Thinking | ||
+ | Machines Corporation and its line of massively parallel computer as an | ||
+ | introduction to his work on automated verification of a compiler | ||
+ | optimization pass through abstract interpretation. Both the | ||
+ | presentation and the following discussion were very lively. | ||
+ | |||
+ | We're always looking for more speakers. The call for speakers and all | ||
+ | the other details are at http://fare.livejournal.com/120393.html | ||
+ | |||
+ | For more information, see our new web site boston-lisp.org. For posts | ||
+ | related to the Boston Lisp meetings in general, follow this link: | ||
+ | http://fare.livejournal.com/tag/boston-lisp-meeting or subscribe to | ||
+ | our RSS feed: http://fare.livejournal.com/data/rss?tag=boston-lisp-meeting | ||
+ | |||
+ | Please forward this information to people you think would be | ||
+ | interested. Please accept my apologies for your receiving this message | ||
+ | multiple times. My apologies if this announce gets posted to a list | ||
+ | where it shouldn't, or fails to get posted to a list where it should. | ||
+ | Feedback welcome by private email reply to fare@tunes.org. | ||
+ | |||
+ | [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] | ||
+ | When all lawful citizens are disarmed, will we have an omnipresent police | ||
+ | state to protect us from armed criminals? | ||
+ | |||
+ | _______________________________________________ | ||
+ | Seminars mailing list | ||
+ | Seminars@lists.csail.mit.edu | ||
+ | https://lists.csail.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/seminars |