B: Better .
B: Mm - hmm .
B: Sure .
B: Mm - hmm .
E: And Fey has foolheartedly agreed to rewrite uh , the German concept uh syntax - to - prosody rules B: I didn't know she spoke German .
E: No , she doesn't .
B: Oh , OK .
E: But she speaks English .
B: Oh . Rewrite the German ones into English .
E: Into English .
B: OK , got it .
E: And um therefore the ,
E: uh E: if it 's OK that we give her a couple of more hours per week , then she 'll do that .
B: OK , got it .
D: What language is that written
D: i Is that that Scheme thing that you showed me ?
E: Yeah .
E: That 's the LISP - type scheme .
D: She knows how to program in Scheme ?
D: I hope ?
E: No , I E: My guess is I I asked for a commented version of that file ?
E: If we get that , then it 's doable ,
E: even without getting into it , even though the Scheme li uh , stuff is really well documented in the Festival .
D: Well , I guess if you 're not used to functional programming , Scheme can be completely incomprehensible .
D: Cuz , there 's no D: Like there 's lots of unnamed functions
C: Syntax .
C: Yeah .
D: and D: You know ?
B: Mm - hmm .
C: Anyway , it We 'll sort this out .
C: Um .
C: But anyway , send me the note
C: and then I 'll - I 'll check with , uh , Morgan on the money .
C: I I don't anticipate any problem
C: but we have to ask .
C: Oh , so this was <nonvocalsound> You know , on the generation thing ,
C: um
C: if <comment> sh y she 's really going to do that , then we should be able to get prosody as well .
C: So it 'll say it 's nonsense with perfect intonation .
D: Are we gonna Can we change the voice of the of the thing ,
D: because right now the voice sounds like a murderer .
E: Yep . We ha we have to change the voice .
B: Wh - Which one ?
D: The the little Smarticus D: Smarticus sounds like a murderer .
B: Oh .
A: That 's good to know .
D: " I have your reservations . "
A: But I will not give them to you unless you come into my lair .
E: It is Uh , we have the choice between the , uh , usual Festival voices ,
E: which I already told the SmartKom people we aren't gonna use because they 're really bad .
B: Festival ?
C: It 's the name of some program ,
C: the the synthesizer .
B: Oh , oh . Got it . OK .
E: But , um
A: You know , the usual party voices .
B: Yeah , I know .
B: That doesn't sound , exactly right either .
E: OGI has , uh , crafted a couple of diphone type voices that are really nice
E: and we 're going to use that .
E: We can still , um , d agree on a gender , if we want .
E: So we still have male or female .
B: I think B: Well , let 's just pick whatever sounds best .
E: Hmm ?
B: Whatever sounds best .
E: Uh .
D: Does OGI stand for ? <comment> Original German Institute ?
B: Unfortunately , probably male voices , a bit more research on .
C: Orego
B: So .
C: Or
E: Oregon .
C: Oregon @ @ <comment> Graduate Institute
E: Try Oregon .
D: Oh .
B: Oregon Graduate Insti
D: Ah .
C: It turns out there 's the long - standing links with these guys in the speech group .
B: Hmm !
C: Very long .
D: Hmm !
E: Hmm .
C: In fact , there 's this guy who 's basically got a joint appointment ,
C: Hynek Hermansky .
C: He 's - spends a fair amount of time here .
C: Anyway .
C: Leave it .
C: Won't be a problem .
E: OK .
E: And it 's probably also absolutely uninteresting for all of you to , um learn that as of twenty minutes ago , David and I , per accident , uh managed to get the whole SmartKom system running on the uh , ICSI Linux machines with the ICSI NT machines
E: thereby increasing the number of running SmartKom systems in this house from one on my laptop to three .
B: Mmm , that 's good .
D: How was this by accident ?
B: Yeah , I know .
B: Tha - that 's the part I didn't understand .
E: Um , I suggested to try something that was really kind of E: even though against better knowledge shouldn't have worked ,
E: but it worked .
B: Hmm !
E: Intuition .
E: Maybe maybe maybe a bit for the AI i intuition thing .
B: Will it work again ,
A: Yeah .
B: or ?
D: Yeah .
E: OK .
E: And , um , we 'll never found out why .
E: It - it 's just like why why the generation ma the presentation manager is now working ?
A: Hmm !
E: Which
A: This is something you ha you get used to as a programmer , right ?
A: You know , <comment> and it 's cool , it works out that way .
E: Hmm .
E: So , the the people at Saarbruecken and I decided not to touch it ever again .
E: Yeah , that would work .
E: OK .
E: Um I was gonna ask you where something is
E: and what we know about that .
A: Where B: Where the " where is " construction is .
A: OK .
E: Where is X ?
A: What what thing is this ?
A: OK .
E: Oh ,
E: but by Uh , we can ask , uh , did you get to read all four hundred words ?
E: Was it OK ?
C: I did .
E: Was it ?
D: I I wa I was looking at it .
C: Yeah .
D: It doesn't follow logically .
D: It doesn't The first paragraph doesn't seem to have any link to the second paragraph .
A: And so on .
E: Hmm .
E: That C: Yeah .
D: Yeah .
C: You know , i Yeah , it D: Each paragraph is good , though .
D: I li
C: I i
C: Yeah . Well , it it 's fine .
A: It was written by committee .
C: Anyway .
C: Um .
C: But c the meeting looks like it 's , it 's gonna be good .
C: So .
E: Yeah .
C: I think it 's uh B: Yeah , I didn't know about it until Robert told me , like ,
C: Yeah , I I ra I ran across it in I don't even know where ,
C: you know some just some weird place .
C: And , uh , yeah , I I 'm surprised I didn't know about it
B: Y yeah . Well , yeah . I was like , why didn't Dan tell me ?
C: since we know all the invited speakers ,
C: an
C: Right , or some
A: Right .
C: Anyway .
C: So But anyway ,
C: yeah .
C: I so I I did see that .
C: Oh wha Yeah . Before we get started on this st
C: 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
C: but starting in August ,
C: that she 's also got a new student working on this and that we should get in touch with them again in August
C: and then we 'll figure out a way for you uh you to get seriously connected with , um their group .
C: So
C: that 's , uh looks pretty good .
C: And um C: Yeah , I 'll say it now .
C: So , um C: And it looks to me like <comment> we 're now at a good point to do something start working on something really hard .
C: We 've been so far working on things that are easy .
A: Oh !
C: Uh , w Which is <comment> mental spaces and uh and - or A: Hmm !
B: It 's hard .
C: Huh ?
B: Yeah , it 's hard .
C: It 's a hard puzzle .
B: Yeah .
A: Yeah .
C: But the other part of it is the way they connect to these , uh , probabilistic relational models .
C: So there 's all the problems that the linguists know about , about mental spaces , and the cognitive linguists know about ,
C: but then there 's this problem of the belief - net people have only done a moderately good job of dealing with temporal belief - nets .
C: Uh , which they call dynamic C: they incorrectly call dynamic belief - nets .
B: Mmm .
C: So there 's a term " dynamic belief - net " , doesn't mean that .
C: It means time slices .
C: And Srini used those and people use them .
C: Uh . But
C: 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
C: and
C: 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 .
C: 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
C: and instances connect to each other , and all that sort of stuff ,
C: 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 .
C: But that 's g that 's , as far as I can tell , it 's it 's putting together two real hard problems .
C: One is the linguistic part of what are the couplings
C: and and when you have a certain , uh , construction , that implies certain couplings and other couplings ,
C: you know , between let 's say between the past and the present ,
C: or any other one of these things
C: and then we have this inference problem of exactly technically how does the belief - net work
C: if it 's got um , let 's say one in in , you know , different tenses
C: or my beliefs and your beliefs ,
C: or any of these other ones of of multiple models .
C: So um
C: you know , in the long run we need to solve both of those
C: and my suggestion is that we start digging into them both , uh , in a way we that , you know , th
C: hopefully turns out to be consistent ,
C: so that the C: Um .
C: And sometimes it 's actually easier to solve two hard problems than one
A: Yeah .
C: because they constrain each other .
C: I mean if you 've got huge ra huge range of possible choices
C: um C: We 'll see .
C: But anyway , so that 's , um A: Oh yeah , like uh , I solved the the problem of um we were talking about how do you A: various issues of how come a plural noun gets to quote " count as a noun phrase " ,
A: you know , occur as an argument of a higher construction , but a bare singular stem doesn't get to act that way .
C: Right .
A: Um ,
A: and it would take a really long time to explain it now ,
A: but I 'm about to write it up this evening .