Grad B: Yeah , I didn't know about it until Robert told me , like ,
Professor C: Yeah , I I ra I ran across it in I don't even know where , you know some just some weird place . And , uh , yeah , I I 'm surprised I didn't know about it
Grad B: Y yeah . Well , yeah . I was like , why didn't Dan tell me ?
Professor C: since we know all the invited speakers , an
Grad A: Right .
Professor C: Right , or some Anyway . So But anyway , yeah . I so I I did see that . Oh wha Yeah . Before we get started on this st so I also had a nice email correspondence with Daphne Kohler , who said yes indeed she would love to work with us on the , um , you know , using these structured belief - nets and stuff but starting in August , that she 's also got a new student working on this and that we should get in touch with them again in August and then we 'll figure out a way for you uh you to get seriously connected with , um their group . So that 's , uh looks pretty good . And um Yeah , I 'll say it now . So , um And it looks to me like {comment} we 're now at a good point to do something start working on something really hard . We 've been so far working on things that are easy .
Grad A: Oh !
Professor C: Uh , w Which is {comment} mental spaces and uh and - or Grad A: Hmm !
Grad B: It 's hard . Yeah , it 's hard .
Professor C: Huh ?
Grad A: Yeah .
Grad B: Yeah .
Professor C: It 's a hard puzzle . But the other part of it is the way they connect to these , uh , probabilistic relational models . So there 's all the problems that the linguists know about , about mental spaces , and the cognitive linguists know about , but then there 's this problem of the belief - net people have only done a moderately good job of dealing with temporal belief - nets . Uh , which they call dynamic they incorrectly call dynamic belief - nets .
Grad B: Mmm .
Professor C: So there 's a term " dynamic belief - net " , doesn't mean that . It means time slices . And Srini used those and people use them . Uh . But one of the things I w would like to do over the next , uh , month , it may take more , {comment} is to st understand to what extent we can not only figure out the constructions for them for multiple worlds and uh sort of what the formalism will look like and where the slots and fillers will be , but also what that would translate into in terms of belief - net and the inferences . So the story is that if you have these probabilistic relational models , they 're set up , in principle , so that you can make new instances and instances connect to each other , and all that sort of stuff , so it should be feasible to set them up in such a way that if you 've got the past tense and the present tense and each of those is a separate uh , belief structure that they do their inferences with just the couplings that are appropriate . But that 's g that 's , as far as I can tell , it 's it 's putting together two real hard problems . One is the linguistic part of what are the couplings and and when you have a certain , uh , construction , that implies certain couplings and other couplings , you know , between let 's say between the past and the present , or any other one of these things and then we have this inference problem of exactly technically how does the belief - net work if it 's got um , let 's say one in in , you know , different tenses or my beliefs and your beliefs , or any of these other ones of of multiple models . So um you know , in the long run we need to solve both of those and my suggestion is that we start digging into them both , uh , in a way we that , you know , th hopefully turns out to be consistent , so that the Um . And sometimes it 's actually easier to solve two hard problems than one
Grad A: Yeah .
Professor C: because they constrain each other . I mean if you 've got huge ra huge range of possible choices um We 'll see . But anyway , so that 's , um Grad A: Oh yeah , like uh , I solved the the problem of um we were talking about how do you various issues of how come a plural noun gets to quote " count as a noun phrase " , you know , occur as an argument of a higher construction , but a bare singular stem doesn't get to act that way .
Professor C: Right .
Grad A: Um , and it would take a really long time to explain it now , but I 'm about to write it up this evening . I solved that at the same time as " how do we keep adjectives from floating to the left of determiners and how do we keep all of that from floating outside the noun phrase " to get something like " I the kicked dog " . Um . Did it did it at once .
Professor C: That 's great .
Grad A: So maybe maybe it 'll be a similar thing .
Grad B: Cool .
Professor C: Yeah . No , I know , I th I I think that is gonna be sort of the key to this wh to th the big project of the summer of of getting the constructions right is that people do manage to do this so there probably are some , uh , relatively clean rules , they 're just not context - free trees .
Grad A: Right .
Professor C: And if we if the formalism is is good , then we should be able to have , you know , sort of moderate scale thing . And that by the way is is , Keith , what I encouraged George to be talking with you about . Not the formalism yet
Grad A: Mm - hmm .
Professor C: but the phenomena .
Grad A: Yeah .
Professor C: The p And Oh , another thing , um there was this , uh thing that Nancy agreed to in a in a weak moment this morning that
Grad A: Hmm !
Grad B: I was really strong .
Grad A: Hmm !
Grad F: Hmm .
Professor C: Uh , sorry . In a in a friendly moment .
Grad A: Same thing .
Professor C: Anyway , uh , that we were that we 're gonna try to get a uh , first cut at the revised formalism by the end of next week .
Grad A: Alright .
Professor C: OK ? Probably skipping the mental spaces part .
Grad B: Seems Grad A: Right . I do .
Professor C: Uh , just trying to write up essentially what what you guys have worked out so that everybody has something to look at . We 've talked about it , but only the innermost inner group currently , uh ,
Grad A: Mm - hmm . Knows .
Professor C: knows , uh
Grad A: OK .
Grad B: Yeah , and and not even all of them really do .
Grad A: Yeah .
Grad B: But like Professor C: Right .
Grad A: There 's The group as a whole knows but no individual member kno
Professor C: Well that that yeah th there 's one of the advantages of a document , right ? ,
Grad A: Yeah .
Professor C: is is that it actually transfers from head to head .
Grad B: Right .
Grad A: OK .