Further Plans for CHAT
The big picture
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Linguistic extensions
- Transformations and movement (completed)
- Add automatic handling of gap percolation and constraints on percolation?
- Auxiliaries (completed)
- Lexical redundancy rules (completed)
- Passive verbs (initial version completed)
- Pronoun reference/binding (completed)
- Infinitivals
- Exceptional case marking
-
Pedagogical improvements
- Agent framework (initial version completed)
- Observer agents
- CMU Link Parser (initial version completed)
- Internal observer: notes when a preferred rule isn't used in generation (complete; could be extended to report other aspects of CHAT's state)
- Broken derivation observer: notes when a previously valid derivation is invalidated (initial version complete)
Other agent ideas:
- grammar-improvement agent playing fellow-student role and suggesting inferred grammar improvements
- Comparison to known lexicon (WordNet, etc.)
- Comparison to known solution for current exercise
- Comparison to other students' solutions
- Report on previously generated sentences no longer parsed
- Other parsers and grammar checkers
- Reporter agents
- Critic: report possible mistakes (simple version implemented)
- Teacher: deliver relevant mini-lessons
- Judge: report on general progress (simple version implemented)
- Spy: compare student's solutions to others
- Reporters for internal observer and broken derivation observer (completed)
- See Lee Spector's March LIS grant group presentation about educational/agent extensions to CHAT.
The small picture
Current work
- Agent improvements
- Improve reporting of parser observations (age postings, improve interface)
- Improve "it broke" agent with feature checking, add corresponding reporter agent
- Add lesson-plan framework and example mini-lessons (?)
- Implement lexical redundancy rules (initial version complete)
- add some automatic spelling improvements
- Minor improvements:
- make agent threads multitask more politely if possible
- improve treatment of new node labels in rule editor (?)
-
Recently completed changes
- Updated interface documentation
- Added "random cousins" -- extra random sentences sent to chat room -- along with interface for viewing them
- Added many interface conveniences:
- "import" grammar or lexicon separately
- "clear" grammar/lexicon
- "disable" items/rules temporarily
- "generate several" button in generator
- lots of other small changes
- Redesigned agent interface (8/18)
- Implemented simple reporter agents for broken-derivation and passed-rule observers (8/11)
- Implemented simple broken-derivation observer agent (8/8)
- Implemented pronoun/noun/anaphor binding (7/12):
- Completed binding system and implemented interface, allowing partial disabling of binding system (7/25)
- Fixed subscripting to consider subscripts of non-C-commanding nodes also (7/14)
- Made several fixes to non-local binding and subscripting (7/14)
- Improved in-line tree generation to make partial trees fully traversable (7/5)
- Added multiple subscripting to node labels (6/30)
- Implemented C-command rules for antecedent selection (6/29)
- Revised binding to co-index user-selected phrases rather than terminal nouns (6/27)
- Added subscripting to node labels (6/26)
- Added binding code to generator (6/23)
- Implemented search for possible antecedents, feature agreement (6/22)
- Added an extra pointer for associating two tree nodes linked by movement or binding (6/19)
- Fixed rule/lexical item editors' object-copying behavior (6/15)
- Added pointers to tree nodes recording the relevant lexical items/rules (6/15)
- Restructured generator so that partial trees are usable during generation (6/13)
- Added parent pointers to tree and generator (6/9)
- Added gender and noun-type features (6/6)
- Added editing of new items generated by lexical redundancy rules before they are added to lexicon (5/24)
- Redesigned interface for lexical redundancy rule editor (5/19)
- Implemented initial version of lexical redundancy rules (5/17)
- Implemented WH-marking (both +wh and -wh) to complete WH-movement (5/10)
- Added WH feature for WH-marking (5/9)
- Implemented nesting of any number of multiple movements (5/2)
- Implemented rough version of internal state observer agent (4/24)
- Added simple "judge" reporter (4/24)
- Tested auxiliary inversion with current generator (4/19)
- Implemented agent framework (4/13)
- Implemented rough version of simple observer and reporter agents (4/12)
- Created temporary interface for user interaction (Agents window) (4/12)
- Implemented blackboard and framework (4/12)
- Created general superclasses for agents, reporter and observer agents (4/6)
- Fixed problem with nesting auxiliaries (a long-standing generation error that didn't show up elsewhere) (4/13)
- Added auxiliary agreement and tense features (4/4)
- Fixed incorrect treatment of terminal-category gaps (3/24)
- Initial version of transformations implemented (using slash notation for passing of gap feature, with students handling percolation) (3/21)
- Minor interface and other improvements:
- tested and fixed internal observer agent (6/4)
- fixed "add all" button behavior for new items generated by lexical rule (6/5)
- improved child window positioning, root node popup size, and other interface items (5/24)
- improved code documentation for network code and elsewhere (5/5)
- built code documentation for all CHAT code using JavaDoc (5/4)
- non-S root nodes are now saved and restored along with grammars (5/3)
- made grammar, lexicon, and generator visible on startup (5/3)
- improved initial window positioning (5/3)
- fixed agent attempts to use network all the time (4/20)
- attempted to improve agents' multitasking politeness (4/20)
- improved reporting of reporter agents' messages (4/19)
- fixed opening/saving files in different folder from CHAT (4/14)
- restored missing data logging, improved logging methods (4/14)
- display tree button now inactive when it should be (4/14)
- added "use chat room" checkbox to ease starting without network (4/6)
- chat button and gap radio buttons are now inactive when they should be (4/6)
- restructured project folders to separate source, project and application files (4/4)
- option/alt-click save button for text export of grammar and lexicon (3/27)
- user now has choice of root node (3/23)
- rule/entry selectors are shown when saved grammar is opened (3/23)
- no need to enter a server address when logging in (3/20)
- lexicon sort is no longer case-sensitive (3/21)
- option/alt-click generate button to generate several sentences at once (3/20)
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