AnnouncementsComputational Linguistics Volume 10, Number 2, April-June 1984

The FINITE STRING Newsletter

Announcements

Pragmatics Documentation Center J. Verschueren/J. Nuyts University of Antwerp Linguistics (Germ. Phil.) Universiteitsplein 1 B-2610 Wilrijk, BELGIUM

A Decade Outlook on Research Opportunities in the Behavioral and Social Sciences

The Committee on Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences is a National Research Council unit established in 1980 to assess and improve the vitality of research in behavioral and social sciences. The first Committee report, Behavioral and Social Science Research: A National Resource (1982), was a general statement of the scientific value, significance, and social utility of behavioral and social science research. A second Committee report, currently in preparation, derives from a 1983 symposium on "Knowledge in Social and Behavioral Science: Discoveries and Trends over Fifty Years". These two Committee projects concentrated on the past record and present dimensions of behavioral and social science. There is now a national commitment to expand the future scientific and technological base. Promising new research directions must be canvassed, resources needed to foster prospective advances must be defined and evaluated, and priorities for additional scien­tific research spending must be developed and rigorously scrutinized. These processes are now occurring in nearly every major branch of science. The Committee has therefore agreed to undertake a Decade Outlook on Research Opportunities in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, with the formal partic­ipation of the National Research Council's Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Social Science Research Council. This project, supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and other sponsors, will be completed in 1986. The Decade Outlook will study scientific frontiers, leading research questions, and new resources needed over the next decade, roughly 1986-1995, for rapid progress on fundamental problems in the behavioral and social sciences. The final report is to contain recommen­dations for research resources, facilities, and programs that may provide a high level of returns to fundamental knowledge. Research areas and new resource needs will be identified by the Committee with substantial advice from many distinguished senior level, mid-career, and promising younger scientists. The Committee invites your ideas on leading research questions for the next ten years and on new resources needed to enable rapid progress to be made on funda­mental problems in the behavioral and social sciences. Responses and inquiries should be addressed to: Committee on Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences National Research Council 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20418 Logic, Language, and Computation Meetings 8-20 July 1985: Stanford University The Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL) and the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) are planning a summer school and a meeting July 8-20, 1985, at Stanford University. The first week (July 8-13) will consist of the CSLI Summer School, during which courses on the following topics will be offered (enrollment in some courses using computers is limited):

Denotational Semantics Types and ML Complexity Theory Abstract Data Types The Theory of Algorithms Generalized Quantifiers LISP

Prof. John Barwise Prof. Maarten van Emden Prof. Gordon Plotkin Dr. David MacQueen Prof. Wolfgang Maass Dr. Jose Meseguer Prof. Yiannis Moschovakis Dr. Lawrence Moss Dr. Brian Smith Logic

Prof. Richmond Thomason

The second week (July 15-20) will consist of an ASL Meeting with invited addresses, symposia, and sessions for contributed papers. Of the invited speakers, the following have already accepted:

Prof. Peter Azcel Prof. Robert Constable Prof. Maarten van Emden Prof. Yuri Gurevich Prof. Anil Gupta* Prof. Hans Kamp

Prof. David Kaplan Prof. Kenneth Kunen Prof. Per Martin-Lof Prof. John Reynolds* Dr. Larry Wos ♦tentative

Prof. R. Chierchia Dr. David-MacQueen

Prof. Solomon Feferman Prof. Barbara Partee

The Role of Logic in AI: Dr. David Israel Prof. John McCarthy

Prof. John Perry

Dr. Stanley Rosenschein

Prof. Robert Stalnaker

For further information or registration forms, write or call

Ingrid Deiwiks CSLI

Ventura Hall Stanford, CA 94305 (415) 497-3084

Room and board in a residence hall on campus are avail­able, and those interested should indicate their prefer­ence for single or shared room, as well as the dates of their stay. Since space is limited, arrangements should be made early. Some Graduate Student Fellowships to cover cost of accommodation in the residence hall are available.

Abstracts of contributed papers should be no longer than 300 words and submitted no later than April 1, 1985.

The program committee consists of Jon Barwise, Solo­mon Feferman, David Israel, and William Marsh.

The first week (July 8-13) conflicts with the 1985 meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (July 8-12, in Chicago). The program committee tried very hard to avoid such conflicts. Unfortunately we faced constraints that made it impossible to do so. (Indeed, as things now stand, the Summer Meetings also overlap with another ASL meeting, on Logic and Alge­bra, in Paris.)

The growth of truly inter-disciplinary work brings with it a high likelihood that there will be scheduling clashes involving the various professional organizations of which researchers are members. We deeply regret this clash between the ASL-CSLI Summer Meetings and the ACL Conference; and we will work hard in the future to elimi­nate such conflicts.

The Wordtree: A Transitive Cladistic for Solving Physical and Social Problems Dr. Henry G. Burger Merriam, KS

380 oversized pages, content equivalent to 1,758 pages. For price, see latest edition of Books in Print.

This new kind of concept-pinpointer groups all words by their effect on the environment - by procedure (= transi­tive verb). It divides each binarily into its sub-processes, such as TO JOCKEY = TO RIDE AND TO MANEUVER. The Hierarchy half of the book arranges the 24,600 tran­sitives from simple to complex. The Index half alphabet­izes them. Thus the user can trace any process back, phase by phase, toward its components (its causes), or forward toward its potential effects. There are a quarter million words including all parts of speech. Thereby the reader can pinpoint any idea, then skip-branch (instead of plodding) to its causes or effects. Includes 90,000 words of instruction and theory. For authors, linguists, attorneys, engineers.