16 April: DCLRS -- Frank Keller "Modeling Prediction in Human Parsing"

Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar: Index of April 2009 | Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of year: 2009 | Full index

[Note: Frank will be in Dublin just for part of Friday, April 24. If
you would like to meet with him at TCD during the day, please send an
email and I will try to arrange a schedule of such discussions.]

Seminar Announcement:

Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar
DCLRS 2008/2009
DCU DIT TCD UCD

Venue: Jonathan Swift Lecture Theatre (Arts Building 2041a)
Trinity College Dublin
Time: 16:00, Friday, April 24, 2009

Title:

Modeling Prediction in Human Parsing

Speaker:

Frank Keller
School of Informatics
University of Edinburgh

Abstract:

There is strong evidence that human sentence processing is
incremental, i.e., that structures are built word by word. Recent
experiments show that the processor also predicts upcoming
linguistic material on the basis of previous input. We present a
computational model of human parsing that is based on a variant of
tree-adjoining grammar and includes an explicit mechanism for
generating and verifying predictions, while respecting
incrementality and connectedness. We outline a linking function
that explains processing difficult as a combination of prefix
probability (surprisal) and verification cost. The resulting model
is able to capture both locality effects and surprisal effects,
unlike existing models of human parsing. We evaluate the model
against reading time data from relative clause and coordinate
structure experiments.

Joint work with Vera Demberg.

Winter Schedule:

January 16 John Tait (Sunderland)
January 23 Gerhard Jaeger (Bielefeld)
January 30 Pat Healey (Queen Mary)
February 6 Sebastian Moeller [cancelled]
February 13 Alfredo Maldonado Guerra (Microsoft Dublin)
February 20 Dietmar Janetzko (NCI)
February 27 Steve Pulman (Oxford) [cancelled]
March 6 Tim Fernando (TCD)
March 13 Andreas Vlachos (Cambridge)

Spring Schedule:

April 3 Tomaz Erjavec (Institute Josef Stefan)
April 10 Public Holiday
April 17 Josef Van Genabith (DCU)
April 24 Frank Keller (Edinburgh)
May 1 held
May 8 Brian Murphy (Trento)
May 15 Kees van Deemter (Aberdeen)
May 22 Elisabeth Andre (Augsburg)

Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of April 2009 | Index of year: 2009 | Full index