Professor D: Right .
Grad B: Um sometime , I have to talk to some subset of the people in this group , at least about um what sort of constructions I 'm looking for . I mean , you know obviously like just again , looking at this one uh thing , you know , I saw y things from sort of as general as argument structure constructions . Oh , you know , I have to do Verb Phrase . I have to do uh uh unbounded dependencies , you know , which have a variety of constructions in uh uh instantiate that . On the other hand I have to have , you know , there 's particular uh , fixed expressions , or semi - fixed expressions like " Get " plus path expression for , you know , " how d ho how do I get there ? " ,
Professor D: Mm - hmm .
Grad B: " How do I get in ? " , " How do I get away ? "
Professor D: Right .
Grad B: and all that kind of stuff . Um , so there 's a variety of sort of different sorts of constructions
Professor D: Absolutely .
Grad B: and it you know it 's it 's sort of like anything goes . Like Professor D: OK , so this is I think we 're gonna mainly work on with George .
Grad B: OK .
Professor D: OK , and hi let me f th say what I think is is so the idea is uh first of all I misspoke when I said we thought you should do the constructions . Cause apparently for a linguist that means to do completely and perfectly . So what I yeah , OK , So what what I meant was " Do a first cut at " .
Grad B: er that 's what Yeah , yeah .
Professor D: OK , Because uh we do wanna get them r u perfectly but I think we 're gonna have to do a first cut at a lot of them to see how they interact .
Grad B: Of course . Right , exactly . Now it w we talked about this before , right . And I I me it would it would be completely out of the question to really do more than , say , like , oh I don't know , ten , over the summer ,
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad B: but uh , but you know obviously we need to get sort of a general view of what things look like , so yeah .
Professor D: Right . So the idea is going to be to do sort of like Nancy did in some of the er these papers where you do enough of them so you can go from top to bottom so you can do f you know , f f uh have a complete story ov of s of some piece of dialogue .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: And that 's gonna be much more useful than having all of the clausal constructions and nothing else , or or or something like that .
Grad B: Yeah . Sure . Yeah .
Professor D: So that the the trick is going to be t to take this and pick a some sort of lattice of constructions ,
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: so some lexical and some phrasal , and and , you know ,
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Professor D: whatever you need in order to uh , be able to then , uh , by hand , you know , explain , some fraction of the utterances .
Grad B: Mm - hmm . Yeah .
Professor D: And so , exactly which ones will partly depend on your research interests and a bunch of other things .
Grad B: Mm - hmm . Sure . OK . But I mean in terms of the s th sort of level of uh of analysis , you know , these don't necessarily have to be more complex than like the " Out of " construction in the BCP paper where it 's just like , you know , half a page on each one or something .
Professor D: Correct . Oh yeah yeah . V a half a page is is what we 'd like .
Grad B: Yeah .
Professor D: And if if there 's something that really requires a lot more than that then it does and we have to do it ,
Grad B: Yeah .
Professor D: but Grad B: For the first cut , that should be fine , yeah .
Professor D: Yeah .
Grad C: We could sit down and think of sort of the the ideal speaker utterances ,
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Grad C: and I mean two or three that follow each other , so , where we can also sort of , once we have everything up and running , show the tremendous , insane inferencing capabilities of our system .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Grad C: So , you know , as as the SmartKom people have . This is sort of their standard demo dialogue , which is , you know , what the system survives and nothing but that .
Grad B: Mm - hmm . Mm - hmm .
Grad C: Um , we could also sor sort of have the analogen of o our sample sentences , the ideal sentences where we have complete construction coverage and , sort of , they match nicely .
Grad B: Mm - hmm .
Grad C: So the the " How do I get to X ? " ,
Grad B: Yeah .
Grad C: you know , that 's definitely gonna be uh , a major one .
Grad B: Yeah . That 's about six times in this little one here , so uh , yeah .
Grad C: Yep .
Professor D: Right .
Grad C: " Where is X ? " might be another one which is not too complicated .
Grad B: Yeah . Mm - hmm .
Grad C: And um " Tell me something about X . "
Grad B: Yeah .
Grad C: And hey , that 's that 's already covering eighty percent of the system 's functionality .
Professor D: Ye - Right , but it 's not covering eighty percent of the intellectual interest .
Grad B: Yeah .
Grad C: No , we can w throw in an " Out of Film " construction if you want to , but Professor D: No , no , no . Well the th the thing is there 's a lot that needs to be done to get this right .
Grad C: OK .
Professor D: OK , I th We done ?
Grad C: I have one bit of news .
Professor D: Good .
Grad C: Um , the action planner guy has wrote has written a a p lengthy proposal on how he wants to do the action planning .
Professor D: Good .
Grad C: And I responded to him , also rather lengthy , how he should do the action planning . And Professor D: " Action planning " meaning " Discourse Modeling " ?
Grad C: Yes . And I tacked on a little paragraph about the fact that the whole world calls that module a dis disc dialogue manager ,
Professor D: Right .
Grad C: and wouldn't it make sense to do this here too ?
Professor D: Right .
Grad C: And also Rainer M Malaka is going to be visiting us shortly , most likely in the beginning of June .
Professor D: Uh - huh , I 'll be gone .
Grad C: Yeah . He - he 's just in a conference somewhere and he is just swinging through town .
Professor D: Sure , OK .
Grad C: And um m making me incapable of going to NAACL , for which I had funding . But . No , no Pittsburg this year .
Grad B: Hmm .
Grad C: When is the uh Santa Barbara ?
Professor D: S
Grad C: Who is going to ? uh should a lot of people . That 's something I will would sort of enjoy .
Professor D: Probably should go . That was that 's one you should probably go to .
Grad C: Yep .
Grad B: How much does it cost ?
Grad C: There 's
Grad B: I haven't planned to go .
Professor D: Uh , probably we can uh pay for it .
Grad B: OK .
Professor D: Um a student rate shouldn't be very high . So , if we all decide it 's a good idea for you to go then you 'll we 'll pay for it .
Grad B: Right . Sure .
Undergrad E: Then you can go .
Professor D: I mean I I don't have a feeling one way or the other at the moment ,
Grad B: OK .
Professor D: but it probably is . OK , great .
Grad B: Thanks .