MAS 962: Computational Semantics 

Instructor: Deb Roy (dkroy@media.mit.edu) 

Units: 12 (H) 

Tuesdays, 2:30-4:30pm, E15-468H 

How do words get their meanings? How can word meanings be represented and used by machines? We will explore three families of approaches to these questions from a computational perspective. Relational / structural methods such as semantic networks represent the meaning of words in terms of their relations to other words. Knowledge of the world through perception and action leads to the notion of external grounding, a process by which word meanings are ‘attached’ to the world. How an agent theorizes about, and conceptualizes its world provides yet another foundation for word meanings. We will examine each of these perspectives, and consider ways to integrate them.
 


  

Schedule

Assignment 1

Reading 1.1: Harnad, S. (1990) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D 42: 335-346.
Reading 1.2: Quillian, M. (1968) Semantic Memory. In M. Minsky, ed, Semantic Information Processing, 216-270. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Assignment 2
Reading 2.1: Miller, G. (1998). Nouns in WordNet, In: WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database, C. Fellbaum, Ed., MIT Press
Reading 2.2: Pustejovsky, J. (2001). Type construction and the logic of concepts. In: The language of word meaning, P. Bouillon and F. Busa, eds., Cambridge University Press.

The following readings will be discussed in class on Tuesday, October 22:
Reading 3.1: Brooks, R. A. (1991). "Intelligence Without Representation", Artificial Intelligence Journal 47: 139–159.
Reading 3.2: Brian Cantwell Smith. On the origin of objects. MIT Press. – excerpts --

Assignment 4
Reading 4.1: Gardenfors, P. (1997). Symbolic, conceptual and subconceptual representations, pp. 255-270 in Human and Machine Perception: Information Fusion, ed. by V. Cantoni, V. di Gesù, A. Setti and D. Tegolo, Plenum Press, New York.
Reading 4.2 Regier, T. and Carlson, L. (2001). Grounding spatial language in perception: An empirical and computational investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 130(2), 273-298.

Reading 4.3 Hofstadter, D. (1995). A Review of Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought." AI Magazine, Fall 1995, 75-80.

Assignment 6: summaries of papers only (will be discussed Nov 12)

Reading 6.1: Allen, James (1995). Natural language understanding. Benjamin/Cummings. Chapter 13.
Reading 6.2: Mueller, Erik T. (2002). ThoughtTreasure: A natural language/commonsense platform.

Assignment 7: Summaries / critiques due by noon on Monday, Nov 18; to be discussed Nov 19

Reading 7.1: Gopnik, A. (1996). The scientist as child. Philosophy of science, 63(4), 485-514.

Reading 7.2: Carey, S. and Spelke, E. (1996). Science and core knowledge. Philosophy of science, 63(4), 515-533.

Assignment 8: Summaries / critiques due by 10am on Tuesday, Nov 26; to be discussed Nov 26

Reading 8.1: Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of Language. Oxford University Press. Chapter 9.

Reading 8.2: Jackendoff, R. (2002). Foundations of Language. Oxford University Press. Chapter 10a, 10b.