UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			     presents

	    "Connecting Two Bi-directionalisms of Grammars:
		   Incrementality and Generation"

			    Dr. Yo Sato
		    (Department of Computer Science,
		    Queen Mary University of London)


		       12 November 2008 (Wednesday)

			 Lecture Theatre LC108
		      Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			      3 - 4 pm

	      Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.
			 [Catering Permitting]

		   Everyone is Welcome to Attend
			 [Space Permitting]



Abstract:

In this talk I will highlight the common aspect in two apparently
unrelated senses for a grammar being bi-directional ---left/right
and parsing/generation--- and argue for a unified bi-directionalism.
The key notion that connects the two is incrementality: the grammar is
rendered sensitive to a 'progress' in interpretation at *every* word
input/output. An incrementality-sensitive grammar facilitates the
parsing/generation bi-directionality, and hence, promotes
resource-sharing between parsing and generation as well as processing
efficiency.

I will first characterize incrementality in terms of psycholinguistic
notion of predictivity, and model the way in which at each word
input/output, a speaker/hearer foresees what can follow for the rest of
the yet-to-be-completed sentence. Predictivity is then
`bi-directionalized' so as to encompass not only the case where a head
is encountered first but also the case where a non-head comes first.
Such a grammar formalism, though based on the left-right notion of
bi-directionalism, prepares itself for the bi-directionalism in the
other sense, i.e. generation/parsing alternatability. Since a partial
string triggers a propositional prediction and *vice versa*,
alternating between them amounts to switching between parsing and
generation.

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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq