1627677
High Precision Extraction of Grammatical Relations
A parsing system returning analyses in the form of sets of grammatical relations can obtain high precision if it hypothesises a particular grammatical relation only when it is certain that the relation is correct. We operationalise this technique -in a statistical parser using a manually-developed wide-coverage grammar of English - by only returning relations that form part of all analyses licensed by the grammar. We observe an increase in precision from 75% to over 90% (at the cost of a reduction in recall) on a test corpus of naturally-occurring text.
16737045
Domain-Specific Sense Distributions and Predominant Sense Acquisition
Distributions of the senses of words are often highly skewed. This fact is exploited by word sense disambiguation (WSD) systems which back off to the predominant sense of a word when contextual clues are not strong enough. The domain of a document has a strong influence on the sense distribution of words, but it is not feasible to produce large manually annotated corpora for every domain of interest. In this paper we describe the construction of three sense annotated corpora in different domains for a sample of English words. We apply an existing method for acquiring predominant sense information automatically from raw text, and for our sample demonstrate that (1) acquiring such information automatically from a mixed-domain corpus is more accurate than deriving it from SemCor, and (2) acquiring it automatically from text in the same domain as the target domain performs best by a large margin. We also show that for an all words WSD task this automatic method is best focussed on words that are salient to the domain, and on words with a different acquired predominant sense in that domain compared to that acquired from a balanced corpus.
5587138
Automatic Extraction of Subcategorization from Corpora
We describe a novel technique and implemented system for constructing a subcategorization dictionary from textual corpora. Each dictionary entry encodes the relative frequency of occurrence of a comprehensive set of subcategorization classes for English. An initial experiment, on a sample of 14 verbs which exhibit multiple complementation patterns, demonstrates that the technique achieves accuracy comparable to previous approaches, which are all limited to a highly restricted set of subcategorization classes. We also demonstrate that a subcategorization dictionary built with the system improves the accuracy of a parser by an appreciable amount1.
18711252
Grammar Compaction and Computation Sharing in Automata-based Parsing
Wide-coverage grammars in Lexicalised Tree-Adjoining Grammar (ltag) and related formalisms are structurally complex, containing many hundreds of elementary trees. In the context of the development of a full-scale ltag-like grammar and parsing system, we have investigated the claim that because many of these trees have a great deal of structure in common, a parser that manipulates trees individually performs a considerable amount of redundant computation. This claim has been used to motivate a parsing technique that encodes trees as nite state automata and captures overlapping computation through automata minimization. Our preliminary results show that this technique leads to considerable computation sharing .
16127213
Supporting interactive collaboration on the Web with CORK
Abstract The World Wide Web has served as a medium for collaboration since its inception. Web-based collaboration has, however, been dominated by systems supporting asynchronous activities such as sharing documents and participating in discussion forums. Supporting interactive, synchronous collaboration on the Web has proven much more challenging. In this paper we describe three of the challenges encountered in the context of supporting network-based collaboration among middle and high school science students: integrating synchronous and asynchronous modes of interaction, minimizing consumption of bandwidth, and adapting non-collaborative software components for collaborative use. We then present the Content Object Replication Kit, a toolkit for building interactive Java-based collaborative systems for use on the Web.
1970300
Acting out the future: a process for envisionment
It is difficult to design innovative information and communication technologies to meet needs that will emerge from future interactions between users, technologies and their situations of use. We have been using scenarios that are acted out as a way of envisioning the future. This paper describes some of the core dilemmas of innovative design. It draws on our existing work as well as ideas from a range of disciplines to present a ‘light’ but useful envisionment process that may be applied to commercial design problems.
39105600
Estimating the Reliability of Regeneration-Based Replica Control Protocols
The accessibility of vital information can be enhanced by replicating the data on several sites and employing a consistency control protocol to manage the replicas. The reliability of a replicated data object depends on maintaining a viable set of current replicas. When storage is limited, it may not be feasible to simply replicate a data object at enough sites to achieve the desired level of reliability. Regeneration approximates the reliability provided by additional replicas for a modest increase in storage costs, and is applicable whenever a new replica of a data object can be created faster than a system failure can be repaired. Regeneration enhances reliability by creating new replicas on other sites in response to site failures. Several strategies for replica maintenance are considered, and the benefits of each are analyzed using simulation and both algebraic and numeric solutions to systems of differential equations. >
1921535
Interface design issues for advice-giving expert systems
Advice giving could become the first successful domain for intelligent interfaces.
5426813
Machinima: digital performance and emergent authorship
This workshop investigates the emergent online dramatic form of "machinima", the co-option of video game engines or off-the-shelf software for dramatic production in a rapidly developing digital performance form. Workshop participants will engage with short examples of popular machinima productions. There will be discussion and demonstration of the machinima production process. The nexus between dramatic conventions, gameplay and traditional video production techniques will be explored. Participants will work with a short piece of a machinima, in the form of a scene created using the Sims 2 game. Participants will improvise, script and perform dialogue to provide meaning for the action. This workshop applies the insights of process drama, a field well developed in educational settings, to the development of machinima. It includes demonstration and participation in dramatic role, focusing on how the conventions of Role Distance and Role Protection apply to this developing field of digital game-based performance.