Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 22:31:40 +0000
From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@english.uga.edu>
Subject: PhD Studentship in Computational Linguistics, University
of Edinburgh
>> From: alex@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
School for Cognitive Science,
Division of Informatics,
University of Edinburgh
PhD STUDENTSHIP for October 1999
in COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
Application deadline: March 31st 1999
Applications received after this deadline may be considered, but this
cannot be guaranteed.
The School for Cognitive Science (SCS) within the Division of
Informatics invites applications for a three-year EPSRC studentship
award to commence in October 1999. The successful applicant will work
on a project entitled "Fragments in Dialogue". A summary of the aims
of this project is given at the end of this message.
Applicants should have a good honours degree or equivalent in Computer
Science, Computational Linguistics or Linguistics. Familiarity with
current linguistic theory in syntax and semantics is essential.
Applicants with expertise in HPSG and good programming skills will be
preferred.
EPSRC studentships are restricted to UK or EU residents. Residents of
the UK are eligible for fees and a maintenance allowance; other EU
residents are eligible for fees only (and so would need to be able to
support themselves during their studies). The EPSRC baseline rate of
maintenance allowance is currently approx 5,295 pounds sterling per
annum. For further general information on EPSRC studentships, please
consult:
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/in-depth/indpfram.htm.
The School for Cognitive Science has close research links with the
Institute for Communicating and Collaborative Systems, which is also
part of the Division of Informatics. Both the school and the
institute were formed out of the Centre for Cognitive Science. The
project "Fragments in Dialogue" is one of several projects on
computational linguistics that are held within the Institute. In
addition to having close connections with other researchers in the
institute and elsewhere in the Division, the research on this project
will also be closely related to ongoing research at CSLI, Stanford
University. For more information about the School of Cognitive
Science and the Institute for Communicating and Collaborative Systems
(ICCS), see the following home page:
Information about students, the PhD Programme, and how to apply for a
PhD can be found by following the various links from the following
URL:
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/ccs/study/
Please note that applicants must fill in the faculty's postgraduate
application form. Details on how to receive this form can be found by
following the relevant links from the above URL (see
http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/ccs/study/apply/).
Please note that the above URLs still refer to the Centre for
Cognitive Science, as these pages haven't been updated with the
Centre's new identity.
If we already have your application on file for consideration this
year, you do not need to apply again.
Deadline for applications: March 31st 1999
Applications received after this deadline may be considered, but this
cannot be guaranteed.
For additional advice and information on how to apply for this PhD
studentship, please contact:
Admissions Chair
The Graduate School
Division of Informatics
The University of Edinburgh
James Clerk Maxwell Building
King's Buildings
Mayfield Road
Edinburgh
EH8 3JZ
Email: phd-admissions@inf.ed.ac.uk
Tel: +44 131 650 5156
Fax: +44 131 667 7209
PLEASE MARK "FRAGMENTS IN DIALOGUE" ON THE APPLICATION.
For additional information on the project "Fragments in Dialogue", please
contact:
Alex Lascarides
ICCS,
Division of Informatics
The University of Edinburgh
2 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh
EH8 9LW
Email: alex@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
Tel: +44 131 650 4428
Fax: +44 131 650 6626
FRAGMENTS IN DIALOGUE: PROJECT SUMMARY
People frequently produce utterances which aren't complete sentences,
such as "Next Tuesday", "Perhaps on Tuesday" and "How about Tuesday?".
In general, these utterances are comprehensible in the context of the
dialogue, and their meaning is affected by the words used in the
fragment, and the context in which they're uttered. In spite of
recent advances in computational semantics, interpreting these
so-called fragments is beyond the scope of current natural language
processing technology. The aim of this project is to rectify this by
doing the following two tasks: (a) provide a linguistically principled
and computationally effective theory of the meaning of fragments,
which does justice to both their grammatical constraints, and the ways
in which pragmatic information in the context affects their
interpretation; and (b) implement the result, and in particular,
incorporate the grammatical theory of fragments into an existing
wide-coverage on-line grammar, which can be used for both parsing and
generation.
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