Corpora: EPSRC Studentship on Metaphor at University of Birmingham, UK

[Mark G Lee]

                       School of Computer Science
                      The University of Birmingham
                             United Kingdom

                   Research Studentship on EPSRC Grant
                           for PhD study in
                   Metaphorical Language Processing
                         and Related Reasoning

                       under Prof. John Barnden
                       and also with Dr Mark Lee

This is to invite applications for a Research Studentship on an
EPSRC-funded project entitled Automated Understanding of Metaphorical
Utterances in Mundane Discourse (EPSRC grant GR/M64208). I am looking
for someone to start as soon as possible, but the start date is
negotiable.

The student will work closely with me (John Barnden) and with my
colleague Dr Mark Lee on the above project.  The work is currently
focused on the pragmatic reasoning needed for metaphorical
understanding, but there is scope also for working on syntactic
processing, semantic processing, detection/analysis of metaphorical
utterances in large text corpora, processing of figurative language
other than metaphor, expansion of the current knowledge bases, and
visualization of reasoning.

Also, I should stress that the project requires particular specialized
developments in areas such as reasoning about events and processes,
spatial reasoning, general uncertain reasoning, and general reasoning
about mental states.  These developments would help with metaphorical
understanding but could be pursued with more general aims.

The project has exciting interdisciplinary connections and
ambitions. The student will need to engage to some extent with research
literature in linguistics, psychology, and/or philosophy, depending
somewhat on the student's own interests. The School provides a fertile
ground for interdisciplinary research generally.

The student's research will ideally be centred on an advanced prototype
reasoning system called ATT-Meta, which is implemented in Quintus
Prolog. ATT-Meta is currently capable of both (a) advanced, uncertain
metaphor-based reasoning and (b) uncertain reasoning about agents'
beliefs to any degree of nesting (X's beliefs about Y's beliefs about
...). The reason for the latter is that I have been mostly
interested in metaphor for mental states and processes, although the
project has now branched out to other types of metaphor.

It would be possible for a student to work independently of the ATT-Meta
system itself while still within the overall project. For instance, it
would be interesting and salutary for the student to develop a rival
system in a dialectical spirit. In the same vein, ATT-Meta is a
more-or-less traditional rule-based system, but the student might wish
to develop a case-based or connectionist model.

I would welcome email or phone enquiries --
     J.A.Barnden at cs.bham.ac.uk
     (+44)(0)121-414-3816.

-----------------------

There is no particular closing date for applications, but early
applications are advisable.

Applicants must have or be about to gain at least an upper second class
honours degree, or an overseas equivalent, in Computer Science,
Artificial Intelligence, or a related area. Applicants should ideally
have an undergraduate or master's level background in Artificial
Intelligence, preferably including Computational Linguistics. However,
other applicants with an undergraduate or master's background in
Computer Science more generally will be considered.

The School's research student prospectus, application form, and
instructions on how to apply are available from:

     http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/studentinfo/form_mailer.html

For other information please see

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~jab (especially the link to ATT-Meta)
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/research.html

If you have an administrative question which is not answered in the
documents cited above, please email admissions at cs.bham.ac.uk.

Questions about the content of the project should come to me, John
Barnden, at J.A.Barnden at cs.bham.ac.uk or (+44)(0)121-414-3816.

------------------------------

The School has research strengths particularly in Artificial
Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Theoretical Computer Science, and
Evolutionary Algorithms. The School has a flourishing research culture
in which there is frequent interaction between people working in these
areas, and between our AI/Cognitive-Science researchers and researchers
in other Schools such as Psychology.  Relevant staff elsewhere in the
University include those in the

  CORPUS RESEARCH GROUP (http://www.clg.bham.ac.uk/)
  and
  FORENSIC LINGUISTICS GROUP (http://www-clg.bham.ac.uk/forensic/),
  both within the Department of English,

  SPEECH RECOGNITION and EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY researchers in
  the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,

  and
  METAPHOR researchers in the Department of English, School of
  Education, and elsewhere.

Also, the Corpus Linguistics Group has a historical association with COBUILD
(http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/).



The University and City
-----------------------

The University of Birmingham is a major civic university founded in 1900
with around 20,000 students of whom about 25% are postgraduates.  It has a
strong research reputation and orientation.

It is located on a pleasant leafy and spacious campus, a few miles south
of the recently redeveloped City Centre, and yet is only a short drive
away from beautiful countryside. The campus has a small railway station
adjacent to it, connecting to the city centre and to towns south of
Birmingham.

The city boasts excellent programmes of classical music, ballet and
theatre. Also, Stratford-upon-Avon with its world-renowned theatrical
productions is only a 40-minute drive from the campus.  The city has an
international airport, and is well placed for access to all parts of
England and Wales by road, rail and air.  It is two hours by rail from
London (under normal timetable conditions!).

The university's Central Information Service manages a web page
providing information about the university and the city
(http://www.bham.ac.uk).

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School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston
BIRMINGHAM, B15 2TT. United Kingdom
Phone: (UK) 0121 414 3819     (International) +44 121 414 4782
Fax:   (UK) 0121 414 4281     (International) +44 121 414 4281