Passing markers: A theory of contextual influence in language comprehension
Cognitive SciencePublished 1 September 1983Open access
Eugene Charniak
Citations167
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.13
SNIP1.32
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
Abstract
Most Artificial Intelligence theories of language either assume a syntactic component which serves as “front end” for the rest of the system, or else reject all attempts at distinguishing modules within the comprehension system. In this paper we will present an alternative which, while keeping modularity, will account for several puzzles for typical “syntax first” theories. The major addition to this theory is a “marker passing” (or “spreading activation”) component, which operates in parallel to the normal syntactic component.
Keywords
PsychologySocial SciencesComputer Science
Psychological ReviewA spreading-activation theory of semantic processing.
8,093 Citations1975Allan M. Collins, Elizabeth F. Loftus
The present paper shows how the extended theory can account for results of several production experiments by Loftus, Juola and Atkinson's multiple-category experiment, Conrad's sentence-verification experiments, and several categorization experiments on the effect of semantic relatedness and typicality by Holyoak and Glass, Rips, Shoben, and Smith, and Rosch.
Cognitive PsychologyUnderstanding natural language
2,802 Citations1972Terry Winograd
A computer system for understanding English that contains a parser, a recognition grammar of English, programs for semantic analysis, and a general problem solving system based on the belief that in modeling language understanding, it must deal in an integrated way with all of the aspects of language—syntax, semantics, and inference.
Metacognitive Aspects of Problem Solving
2,773 Citations2024John H. Flavell
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal BehaviorLexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re)consideration of context effects
1,785 Citations1979David Swinney
ACM Computing SurveysThe Hearsay-II Speech-Understanding System: Integrating Knowledge to Resolve Uncertainty
1,341 Citations1980Lee D. Erman, Frederick Hayes‐Roth +2 more
The characteristics of the speech problem in particular, the special kinds of problem-solving uncertainty in that domain, the structure of the Hearsay-II system developed to cope with that uncertainty, and the relationship between Hearsey-II's structure and those of other speech-understanding systems are discussed.
Language<b>A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language</b> . By Mitchell P. Marcus. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980. Pp. 335. $25.00.
919 Citations1982Michael B. Kac
It will be shown that this 'determinism' hypothesis, explored within the context of the grammar of English, leads to a simple mechanism, a grammar interpreter.
Elsevier eBooksON THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL STATUS OF SEMANTIC NETWORKS**Prepared in part at Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. under contracts sponsored by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research. The views and conclusions stated are those of the author and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either express or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the U.S. Government.
623 Citations1979Ronald J. Brachman
This chapter examines in detail the history of a set of network-structured formalisms for knowledge representation—the so-called “semantic networks,” which were introduced around 1966 as a representation for the concepts underlying English words and were designed expressly to treat concepts as formal representational objects.
NETL: A System for Representing and Using Real-World Knowledge
528 Citations1979Scott E. Fahlman
A simulator for the parallel network system has been implemented in MACLISP, and an experimental version of NETL, a language for storing real-world information in such a network, is running on this simulator.
Communications of the ACMAn intelligent analyzer and understander of English
191 Citations1975Yorick Wilks
A working analysis and generation program for natural language, which handles paragraph length input, which is contrasted: with syntax oriented linguistic approaches, and with theorem proving approaches to the understanding problem.
Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)Generalization and memory in an integrated understanding system
183 Citations1980Michael Lebowitz
An integrated system for language understanding IPP (Integrated Partial Parser), that encompasses the ability to generalize and record information in long-term memory as well as conceptual analysis is described.
Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)Comprehension by computer : expectation-based analysis of sentences in context
170 Citations1976Christopher K. Riesbeck, Roger C. Schank
ELI (English Language Interpreter) is a natural language parsing program currently used by several story understanding systems that produces meaning representations rather than syntactic structures and uses context-based exceptions to control its parsing routines.
Procedural semantics for a question-answering machine
127 Citations1968William A. Woods
A survey of some fifteen experimental question-answering and related systems which have been constructed since 1959, which take input questions in natural English and attempt to answer the questions on the basis of a body of information, called the data base, which is stored inside the computer.
National Conference on Artificial IntelligenceKnowledge representation for syntactic/semantic processing
80 Citations1980Robert Bobrow, Bonnie Webber
The RUS framework for natural language processing is described, in which a parser incorporating a substantial ATN grammar for English interacts with a semantic interpreter to simultaneously parse and interpret input.
Artificial IntelligenceA common representation for problem-solving and language-comprehension information
64 Citations1981Eugene Charniak
It is shown that problem solvers are primarily concerned with deep inferences in narrow domains, while language comprehenders are more concerned with shallow inference in broader areas, and a compromise position is suggested which will use both frames and predicate calculus.
International Joint Conference on Artificial IntelligenceOn semantic nets, frames and associations
47 Citations1977Philip J. Hayes
Initial antibiotic treatment including a macrolide agent is associated with improved outcomes in Medicare patients hospitalized with bacteremic pneumonia, and these results have implications regarding the mechanism by which the use of amacrolide for treatment of pneumonia is associatedWith improved outcomes.
Linguistics and PhilosophyA parsing method for montague grammars
30 Citations1978Joyce Friedman, David S. Warren
This paper is a method for obtaining derivation trees from sentences of certain formal grammars, applied to Montague's PTQ, which directly addresses scope and reference and provides a framework for examining these phenomena.
International Joint Conference on Artificial IntelligenceWord expert parsing
30 Citations1979Chuck Rleger, Steven L. Small
An approach to natural language meaning-based parsing in which the unit linguistic knowledge is the word rather than the rewrite rule is described, advanced as a better cognitive model of human language expertise than the traditional rule-based approach.
Language comprehension in a problem solver
12 Citations1981Douglas T. Wong
The intent of this paper is to give a flavor of how the context recognizer PRAGMATICS works and what it can do, drawn from the inventory-control, restaurant and blocks-world domains.
