Understanding English with lattice-learning
Name
367652875-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
23.85 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
28d2d402cca82848097f9d08fe157f2a
Author(s)
Klein, Michael Tully, Jr
Advisor(s)
Patrick Henry Winston.
Date Issued
2008
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
A computer program that can understand the meaning of written English must be tremendously complex. It would break the spirit of any programmer to try to code such a program by hand; the range of meaning we can express in natural language is far too broad, too nuanced, too filled with exception. So I present UNDERSTAND, a program you can teach by example. Learning by example is an engineering expedient: it is much easier for us to come up with specific examples of a concept than some sort of perfect Platonic model. UNDERSTAND uses a technique I call Lattice-Learning to generalize accurately from just a few examples: "Robins, bees and helicopters can fly, but cats, worms and boats cannot," is enough for UNDERSTAND to narrow in on our concept of flying things: birds, insects and aircraft. It takes only 8 positive and 4 negative examples to teach UNDERSTAND how to interpret sentences as complicated as "The cat ran from the yard because a dog appeared." UNDERSTAND is implemented in 2300 lines of Java.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 49).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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