16.446, Diss: Comp Ling: Popescu-Belis: 'Multi-Agent ...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-446. Mon Feb 14 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.446, Diss: Comp Ling: Popescu-Belis: 'Multi-Agent ...'

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1)
Date: 14-Feb-2005
From: Andrei Popescu-Belis < Andrei.Popescu-Belis at issco.unige.ch >
Subject: Multi-Agent Modeling of Linguistic Interaction

	
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:14:48
From: Andrei Popescu-Belis < Andrei.Popescu-Belis at issco.unige.ch >
Subject: Multi-Agent Modeling of Linguistic Interaction



Institution: University of Paris 11, Orsay
Program: Computer Science
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 1999

Author: Andrei Popescu-Belis

Dissertation Title: Multi-Agent Modeling of Linguistic Interaction

Dissertation URL:  http://andreipb.free.fr/these.en.html

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science
                     Computational Linguistics
                     Pragmatics

Subject Language(s): French (FRN)


Dissertation Director(s):
Gerard Sabah

Dissertation Abstract:

Linguistic interaction is studied here within a multi-agent framework that
we call 'simulated pragmatics'. Adapting G. M. Edelman's neural darwinism
to build an adaptive agent is a first step towards naturalistic bases of
language for an agent. Our simulation of the emergence of language
conventions in an agent population then demonstrates the advantage of using
a lexicalized tree adjoining grammar.

These achievements do not investigate, however, the essential link between
the communication code and the entities it might denote, mainly the problem
of linguistic reference. After presenting the existent theories, models and
systems, we identify eleven referential cases and their expression in
French, from a functionalist point of view. We propose a model for the
referring capacity of an agent, which links the referring cases to
perceptual states. In order to study reference on real texts, a
pragmatics-inspired model is also proposed, relying on the agents' internal
representations. This model is adapted to build a reference solver; the
related tools and the results are given further on.

These results are based on an original frame for natural language
processing systems evaluation, together with coherence criteria for quality
measures. Several measures, some existing and some original, are analyzed;
we define 'referring information' for a measure adapted to agent
communication. These measures allow us to compare our solver with other
approaches, to optimize its parameters, and to support some of the previous
results on the expression of referential cases.




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