From owner-cse727-sp07-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sun Apr 8 13:01:11 2007 Received: from ares.cse.buffalo.edu (ares.cse.Buffalo.EDU [128.205.32.79]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l38H1B5V022265 for ; Sun, 8 Apr 2007 13:01:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from front2.acsu.buffalo.edu (upfront.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.4.140]) by ares.cse.buffalo.edu (8.13.6/8.13.6) with SMTP id l38H19Zm073586 for ; Sun, 8 Apr 2007 13:01:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 10535 invoked from network); 8 Apr 2007 17:01:09 -0000 Received: from mailscan1.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.6.133) by front2.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 8 Apr 2007 17:01:09 -0000 Received: (qmail 2819 invoked from network); 8 Apr 2007 17:01:08 -0000 Received: from deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.57) by front1.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 8 Apr 2007 17:01:08 -0000 Received: (qmail 27406 invoked from network); 8 Apr 2007 17:01:00 -0000 Received: from listserv.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.35) by deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 8 Apr 2007 17:01:00 -0000 Received: by LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 14.5) with spool id 4459370 for CSE727-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU; Sun, 8 Apr 2007 13:01:00 -0400 Delivered-To: cse727-sp07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu Received: (qmail 15178 invoked from network); 8 Apr 2007 17:01:00 -0000 Received: from mailscan1.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.6.133) by listserv.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 8 Apr 2007 17:01:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 8870 invoked from network); 8 Apr 2007 17:00:59 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.buffalo.edu (128.205.32.14) by smtp1.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 8 Apr 2007 17:00:59 -0000 Received: from castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (rapaport@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.10) with ESMTP id l38H0xia022249 for ; Sun, 8 Apr 2007 13:00:59 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from rapaport@localhost) by castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU (8.13.6/8.12.9/Submit) id l38H0xuv022248 for cse727-sp07-list@listserv.buffalo.edu; Sun, 8 Apr 2007 13:00:59 -0400 (EDT) X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-PM-EL-Spam-Prob: : 7% Message-ID: <200704081700.l38H0xuv022248@castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU> Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 13:00:59 -0400 Reply-To: "William J. Rapaport" Sender: "CVA Seminar, Spring 2007" From: "William J. Rapaport" Subject: FIGURING OUT MISSING P.K. To: CSE727-SP07-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Precedence: list List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-UB-Relay: (castor.cse.buffalo.edu) X-DCC-Buffalo.EDU-Metrics: castor.cse.Buffalo.EDU 1336; Body=0 Fuz1=0 Fuz2=0 X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_40,SUBJ_ALL_CAPS autolearn=no version=3.1.7 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.7 (2006-10-05) on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.88.6/3042/Sun Apr 8 10:40:38 2007 on ares.cse.buffalo.edu X-Virus-Status: Clean Status: R Content-Length: 3609 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: FIGURING OUT MISSING P.K. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's a strategy that might help some of you in figuring out what missing prior knowledge (PK) needs to be added to allow Cassie to compute what your unknown word means. Suppose you have several sentences from the text: T1..Tn And suppose you have several PK propositions: P1..Pn Finally, suppose you have (from your informants) a proposition that expresses a meaning for your unknown word w: (*) if F(w), then DEF. Here, F(w) is some proposition, either in the text or inferred from the text together with PK, that uses the word w. Presumably, one or more of the Ti or Pj involve F(w). What you need to add to the PK is a very general statement about an unknown concept (which will match the unknown word) that will enable you to link the Ti and Pj with (*). I'm not sure that speaking in generalities like this will help you very much, so let me append to this message some advice I gave Yana about her situation. Hopefully, you'll see how it fits the above pattern, and perhaps you'll be able to see how to apply it to your situation. There is one "trick" that I forget to tell Yana (so, Yana, I'm telling you now!), namely, to add to PK the following claim: w is unknown That may seem silly, but it makes sense: After all, you know that you don't know what "w" means! This just makes that explicit. Now, here's the advice I gave Yana (with a few extra comments to make it self-explnatory): 1. We have (from the text) that: As Miss Wilkinson becomes more importunate, Philip begins to feel discomfort (etc.) 2. And we have (from prior knowledge) that: Anyone who feels discomfort is not OK. "importunate" is an unknown concept. 3. We need to get things of the form: If a person is importunate, then that person is pushy. If a person is importunate, then that person is sexually agressive. (This comes from the human protocols.) 4. So, we need to add to PK things of the following forms: If X is an unknown concept & if a person becomes X & if a second person is not OK because the first person became X & (maybe some other things along these lines that hint at pushiness) then the first person is pushy because that person is X If X is an unknown concept & if a person becomes X & if a second person is not OK because the first person became X & (maybe some other things along these lines that hint at sexual aggressiveness) then the first person is sexually agressive because that person is X. 5. This should allow Cassie to infer that Miss Wilkinson is pushy and sexually agressive because she is importunate. 6. Then we could have another PK that would say something like: If X is unknown & if a person is X & if that person has property F because that person is X then if someone is X, then they are F This should allow Cassie to infer that if someone is importunate, they are pushy and sexually agressive. That may be the best we can hope for in the absence of an adjective definition algorithm. It's also not a very good definition of "importunate", but it *is* consistent with what Yana's informants got out of the text. Moreover, it might be the best that anyone could do with that text, because there's really nothing in the text that would allow someone to infer that "importunate" means "persistent" or "persistent in requesting something". In other words, the text is consistent with "importunate" meaning "pushy and sexually agressive".