Recent (or recently posted) research
Computational psycholinguistics
Click here.
Applied pragmatics
Covington, Michael A., Can Machines Be Polite?
Presented at Cognitive Systems Conference,
sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories, Santa Fe, N.M., July 2005.
PowerPoint File
PDF File (very large, downloads slowly)
Covington, Michael A., The Technological Relevance of Natural Language Pragmatics.
Presented at Cognitive Systems Conference,
sponsored by University of New Mexico and Sandia National Laboratories, Santa Fe, N.M., July 2003.
PowerPoint File
PDF File
Computer ethics (old papers newly posted here)
Covington, Michael A., Design and Implementation of a Campus Computer Ethics Policy,
Internet Research 5.4 (1995) 31-41.
PDF File
Covington, Michael A., Unfinished Chapters on Internet Ethics.
(From a book project discontinued in 2001.)
PDF File
Other areas
Covington, Michael A. (2001)
A fundamental algorithm for dependency parsing.
Proceedings, 39th Annual ACM Southeast Conference, Athens, Georgia, 2001.
PDF File
Covington, Michael A. (2005)
Scientia sermocinalis: Grammar in medieval classifications of the sciences.
Nicola McLelland and Andrew Linn (eds.), Flores Grammaticę: Essays in Memory of Vivien Law, pp. 49-54.
Nodus Publikationen, Münster, 2005.
PDF File.
Covington, Michael A. (1978)
Stoic Syntax: The structure of the axioma in the logic of the Old Stoa.
Released on the Web in 2006.
PDF file.
Note: The rest of this page is not entirely up to date. Some of the papers
distributed here have subsequently been published. A major reorganization of this
page is planned.
As of 2001, nearly all my research effort is going into one or two large projects, and I am not
actively pursuing everything listed below.
Links to past research
Note: PDF files can be viewed with Acrobat Reader,
available free of charge from Adobe.
Defeasible logic in embedded control
Defeasible logic is a system of reasoning in which rules have exceptions,
and when rules conflict, the one that applies most specifically to the
situation wins out.
Defeasible logic on an embedded microcontroller
(PDF as published)
This paper reports a successful implementation of
a defeasible logic system on a PIC microcontroller via a truth table.
Logical control of an elevator with defeasible logic
(PDF as published)
(PDF of manuscript, more readable)
This paper reanalyzes Dyck and Caines' elevator control system
using defeasible instead of classical logic.
Alcor: A Microcontroller-Based Control
Circuit for Conventional AC Telescope Drives
(for astronomy)
The Georgia Microcontroller Software Archive
A large collection of free software, mainly for the 8051 and PIC, not up to date.
Language for electronic commerce
On Designing a Language for Electronic Commerce
(PDF)
(PostScript)
I propose a new type of language for electronic commerce (LEC) in which
transactions are put together by combining meaningful elements, much as
a programming language encodes algorithms, rather than by filling in data
fields on a predesigned form.
Such a language is preferable to existing codes such as X12 and EDIFACT
because of its greater versatility.
(A revised version of this paper has been published in
International Journal of Electronic Commerce.)
Speech Acts in Electronic Communication, KQML, and X12
(PDF)
(PostScript)
KQML (Finin et al.) is a markup language for transferring knowledge
in electronic commerce transactions. This paper is a critical review
of KQML from the standpoint of speech act theory and formal semantics.
(A revised version of this paper has been published in
Decision Support Systems.)
Computers in historical linguistics
An algorithm to align words for historical comparison
(PDF)
(PostScript)
This is the first step in a computer implementation of the Comparative
Method. A revised version of this paper
has been published in Computational Linguistics.
Aligning multiple languages for historical comparison
(PDF)
Extension of the above to more than 2 languages at a time.
Presented at COLING-ACL '98.
The number of distinct alignments of two strings
(PDF)
(PostScript)
Natural language processing (other topics)
Converging transition networks and sub-morphemic regularities
in Latin noun inflection
(PDF)
(PostScript)
Numerous sub-morphemic regularities in Latin, otherwise unexplained,
reduce the memory space needed to represent the inflectional system
as a character tree (trie).
Natural language plurals in database queries
(PDF)
(PostScript)
Prolog implementation of distributive and collective plurals and
exploration of some related phenomena.
Revised version published in Applied Artificial Intelligence.
Discontinuous dependency parsing: work in progress
(PDF)
(PostScript)
A dependency parser for free-word-order languages
(PDF)
(PostScript)
See also linguistics and GULP.
Prolog and logic programming
Prolog Programming in Depth,
by Michael A. Covington, Donald Nute, and Andre Vellino.
Textbook with emphasis on practical software development.
Published by Prentice-Hall in 1996. Some copies of the
previous edition (1987) are available from the University of Georgia;
for information, email me.
Natural Language Processing for Prolog Programmers,
by Michael A. Covington.
Textbook with emphasis on practical software development.
Published by Prentice-Hall in 1993.
GULP (Graph Unification Logic Programming) now has
its own web page.
Efficient Prolog: a practical guide
(PDF)
(PostScript)
Practical notes for Prolog programmers.
Published in Artificial Intelligence Review.
Other linguistics research
Why the ablative, locative, and instrumental cases fell together in Latin
(PDF)
(PostScript)
These cases have different meanings but similar syntax; they all mark
optional modifiers of the main verb.
A 700-year-old argument for a syntactic transformation
(web page)
This paper appeared in an online festschrift for Noam Chomsky organized by MIT Press.
An empirically motivated reinterpretation of dependency grammar
(PDF)
(PostScript)
On the nature of the adjunct relation.
GB theory as dependency grammar
(PDF)
(PostScript)
Paper presented at the 1992 International Congress of Linguists.
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