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Marge McShane & Sergei Nirenburg

Marge McShane & Sergei Nirenburg. What we do. Linguistics Descriptive Cross-linguistic Computational (Theoretical) Knowledge engineering Preparing machine-tractable knowledge bases to support the physiological and cognitive simulation of intelligent agents

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Marge McShane & Sergei Nirenburg

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  1. Marge McShane & Sergei Nirenburg

  2. What we do • Linguistics • Descriptive • Cross-linguistic • Computational • (Theoretical) • Knowledge engineering • Preparing machine-tractable knowledge bases to support the physiological and cognitive simulation of intelligent agents • Writing reasoning & decision-making functions for those intelligent agents • Developing knowledge representation strategies

  3. System building • OntoSem • Maryland Virtual Patient

  4. What might work well as a thesis topic • Linguistic data analysis • No background or infrastructure required • Has the flavor of a treasure hunt • Gives you the opportunity to read, explore corpora • Gives you the opportunity to work with a language informant, if you choose to, or serve as your own language informant

  5. Modal Scope Ellipsis • Aid workers in war-ravaged Kabul were stunned when a toddler from a poor family offered to teach illiterate women to read and write– and then promptly proved he could [e]. • He wanted to offer to help but then decided not to [e]. • Brandon said he would like to find his own lawyerbut was not sure he could [e].

  6. Benign Ambiguity • They managed to get out; his wife did not [e]. • They managed to get out; his wife did not [e].

  7. How far does modality matching get us? • John wanted to ski and did [ski]. • if volitive then epistemic with same understood subject, leave volitive out of reconstruction • John had to ski and could [ski]. • If obligative then potential with same understood subject leave obligative out of reconstruction • John wanted to try to ski but Mary didn’t [want to try to ski] • If any modality(-ies) then epistemic with a change in subject, include the modalities in the reconstruction

  8. This/that resolution • So it's easier tosimply mouth the popular view, or to try and discern views of the interviewer and espouse those. This, however, can be a very dangerous practice.

  9. Other angles • Select any linguistic phenomenon and analyze it within a language or cross-linguistically – even very cross-linguistically (e.g., for 20 languages) • Select an author whose style you do/don’t like and rigorously describe the linguistic aspects of his/her style; or compare multiple authors with respect to some features. • Create linguistic puzzles.

  10. If you like working in a team effort • When the time comes to actually work on a topic, check in with us • programming • knowledge acquisition • the “linguistics puzzles” project

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