INDEPENDENT-STUDY COURSE ON CONTEXTUAL VOCABULARY ACQUISITION
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Prof. William J. Rapaport (Department of Computer Science and
Engineering) and Prof. Michael W. Kibby (Department of Learning and
Instruction, and Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction) are
principal investigators on a National Science Foundation grant, under
the Research on Learning and Education (ROLE) program:

CONTEXTUAL VOCABULARY ACQUISITION:
Development of a Computational Theory and Educational Curriculum

We are developing a computational theory of how natural-language-understanding
systems can automatically acquire new vocabulary by determining from
context the meaning of words that are unknown, misunderstood, or used
in a new sense.  

We propose:

(a) to extend and develop algorithms for computational contextual
vocabulary acquisition (CVA):  learning, from context, meanings for
"hard" word: nouns (including proper nouns), verbs, adjectives, and adverbs,

(b) to unify a disparate literature on the topic of CVA from
psychology, first- and second-language (L1 and L2) acquisition, and
reading science, in order to help develop these algorithms, and

(c) to use the knowledge gained from the computational CVA system to
build and to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational curriculum
for enhancing students' abilities to use deliberate (i.e.,
non-incidental) CVA strategies in their reading of science, math,
engineering, and technology texts at the middle-school and college
undergraduate levels: teaching methods and guides, materials for
teaching and practice, and evaluation instruments.

The knowledge gained from case studies of students using our CVA
techniques will feed back into further development of our computational theory.

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We are seeking students who would be interested in doing research on
this topic as part of an independent-study course.
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The work would involve using natural-language-processing techniques, such
as ATN (augmented-transition-network) grammars, and the SNePS knowledge
representation and reasoning system.

For more information on the project, see:

Rapaport, William J., & Ehrlich, Karen (2000), "A Computational Theory
of Vocabulary Acquisition", in Lucja M. Iwanska & Stuart C. Shapiro (eds.),
_Natural Language Processing and Knowledge Representation: Language for
Knowledge and Knowledge for Language_ (Menlo Park, CA/Cambridge, MA:
AAAI Press/MIT Press): 347-375; preprint on the Web at
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/krnlp.tr.pdf

Rapaport, William J., & Kibby, Michael W. (2000), "Contextual
Vocabulary Acquisition: Development of a Computational Theory and
Educational Curriculum", NSF grant proposal, on the web at:
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/role.pdf

Rapaport, William J. (2000), "A (Partial) Bibliography (in Chronological
Order) of (Computational) Theories of Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition",
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/refs.vocab.html

Further information on SNePS can be found at:
        http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/SNePS

Further information on ATNs can be found at:
        http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/doc_home?elib_id=rw-lib11
and
        http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~jsantore/snepsman/node113.html


Students interested may register for either:

CSE 499 - Independent Study, Section RAP
http://wings.buffalo.edu/schedule/index.cgi?action=class&table=winston.FALLSCHED&div=1&ent=CSE&num=499&sec=RAP

or

CSE 700 - Independent Study, Section RAP
http://wings.buffalo.edu/schedule/index.cgi?action=class&table=winston.FALLSCHED&div=2&ent=CSE&num=700&sec=RAP

during the Fall 2001 semester.

For more information, please see Prof. Rapaport:

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William J. Rapaport
Associate Professor of Computer Science & Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
Member, Center for Cognitive Science
Associate Director, SNePS Research Group (SNeRG)

226 Bell Hall (office: 214 Bell)        | work: 716-645-3180 x 112
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering | fax:  716-645-3464  
SUNY Buffalo                            | home: 716-636-8625
Buffalo, NY 14260-2000                  | rapaport@cse.buffalo.edu
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CSE: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/
homepage:                      /~rapaport/
SNeRG:                         /sneps/
Buffalo Restaurant Guide:      /restaurant.guide/
Center for Cognitive Science:  http://www.cogsci.buffalo.edu/