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Speaker Name/Affiliation: Srini Narayanan/University of California
Berkley

Date/Time: Friday October 26 2007 11:00 a.m.

Lo

cation: ACES 2.402

Host: Ray Mooney

Talk Title: Simulation
Semantics: A Computational framework
for exploring the links between L

anguage Cognition and Action

Talk Abstract:

The UCB/ICSI NTL
(http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/NTL ) project is
an ongoing attempt to mo

del language behavior in a way that is
both neurally plausible and compu

tationally practical. Work
within the NTL project coupled with a variet

y of converging
evidence from Cognitive Linguistics Psychology and
N

euroscience suggests that language understanding involves
embodied enact

ment which we call simulation semantics.

Simulation semantics hypoth

esizes the mind as simulating
the external world while functioning in i

t. The simulation
takes noisy linguistic input together with general kn

owledge
and makes new inferences to figure out what the input means
and to guide response. Monitoring the state of the external
world dra

wing inferences and acting jointly constitute a
dynamic ongoing intera

ctive process. This talk reports on a
computational realization of the s

imulation semantics
hypothesis and preliminary results on applying the m

odel to
vexing problems in Natural Language Understanding.

Speake

r Bio:

Srini Narayanan leads the strongly interdisciplinary ICSI

(http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu) AI group comprising of computer
scientist

s linguists and neuroscientists studying language
and cognition. Srini
Narayanan is also on the Cognitive Science
faculty (http://www.cogsci.b

erkeley.edu) and an Adjunct
Professor at the Institute for Cognitive and
Brain Sciences
(http://www.icbs.berkeley.edu) at the University of Cali

fornia
Berkeley. His current research interests include cognitive
co

mputation computational biology natural language
understanding and in

formation technology for developing
regions. Prof. Narayanan is the reci

pient (with Dan Jurafsky)
of a David Marr distinguished paper award a G

oogle faculty
research award and a Fellowship at the Institute for Adva

nced
Study Berlin (http://www.wiko-berlin.de).