Jerry Hobbs
Encyclopedia
Jerry R. Hobbs is a prominent researcher in the fields of computational linguistics
, discourse analysis
, and artificial intelligence
.
in 1974 in computer science
. He has taught at Yale University
and the City University of New York
.
at SRI International
, Menlo Park
, California
, where he was a principal scientist and program director of the Natural Language Program. He has written numerous papers in the areas of parsing
, syntax
, semantic interpretation, information extraction
, knowledge representation
, encoding commonsense knowledge, discourse analysis
, the structure of conversation, and the Semantic Web
.
He is the author of the book Literature and Cognition, and was also editor of the book Formal Theories of the Commonsense World. He led SRI's text-understanding research, and directed the development of the abduction
-based TACITUS system for text understanding, and the FASTUS system for rapid extraction of information from text based on finite-state automata. The latter system constituted the basis for an SRI spinoff, Discern Communications. In September 2002 he took a position as senior computer scientist and research professor at the Information Sciences Institute
, University of Southern California
. He has been a consulting professor with the Linguistics Department and the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford University.
He has served as general editor of the Ablex Series on Artificial Intelligence
. He is a past president of the Association for Computational Linguistics
, and is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence
. In January 2003 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....
, discourse analysis
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event....
, and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
.
Education
He earned his doctor's degree from New York UniversityNew York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
in 1974 in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. He has taught at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
and the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
.
Career
From 1977 to 2002 he was with the Artificial Intelligence CenterArtificial Intelligence Center
The Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International was founded in 1966 by Charles Rosen and studies artificial intelligence. One of their early projects was Shakey the Robot, the first general-purpose mobile robot. More recently, the center funded early development of CALO and Siri....
at SRI International
SRI International
SRI International , founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. Based in Menlo Park, California, the trustees of Stanford University established it in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was later...
, Menlo Park
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where he was a principal scientist and program director of the Natural Language Program. He has written numerous papers in the areas of parsing
Parsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
, syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, semantic interpretation, information extraction
Information extraction
Information extraction is a type of information retrieval whose goal is to automatically extract structured information from unstructured and/or semi-structured machine-readable documents. In most of the cases this activity concerns processing human language texts by means of natural language...
, knowledge representation
Knowledge representation
Knowledge representation is an area of artificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitate inferencing from those knowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge...
, encoding commonsense knowledge, discourse analysis
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event....
, the structure of conversation, and the Semantic Web
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
.
He is the author of the book Literature and Cognition, and was also editor of the book Formal Theories of the Commonsense World. He led SRI's text-understanding research, and directed the development of the abduction
Abductive reasoning
Abduction is a kind of logical inference described by Charles Sanders Peirce as "guessing". The term refers to the process of arriving at an explanatory hypothesis. Peirce said that to abduce a hypothetical explanation a from an observed surprising circumstance b is to surmise that a may be true...
-based TACITUS system for text understanding, and the FASTUS system for rapid extraction of information from text based on finite-state automata. The latter system constituted the basis for an SRI spinoff, Discern Communications. In September 2002 he took a position as senior computer scientist and research professor at the Information Sciences Institute
Information Sciences Institute
The Information Sciences Institute is a research and development unit of the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering which focuses on computer and communications technology and information processing...
, University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. He has been a consulting professor with the Linguistics Department and the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford University.
He has served as general editor of the Ablex Series on Artificial Intelligence
Ablex Publishing
Ablex Publishing Corporation is a privately held book publisher and academic journal publisher in New York City, New York, USA. It was previously located in Norwood, New Jersey, and also at one time in Westport and Stamford, Connecticut...
. He is a past president of the Association for Computational Linguistics
Association for Computational Linguistics
The Association for Computational Linguistics is the international scientific and professional society for people working on problems involving natural language and computation. An annual meeting is held each summer in locations where significant computational linguistics research is carried out...
, and is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence
American Association for Artificial Intelligence
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence or AAAI is an international, nonprofit, scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines...
. In January 2003 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Works
- Literature and Cognition (Lecture Notes, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Jul 9, 1990)
- Local Pragmatics (Technical note, SRI International, 1987)
- Commonsense Metaphysics and Lexical Semantics (Technical note, SRI International, 1986)
- An Algorithm for Generating Quantifier Scopings (Report, Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1986)
- Formal Theories of the Commonsense World (Ablex Series in Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 1, Jun 1985, with Robert C. Moore)
- On the Coherence and Structure of Discourse (Report, 1985)
- The Coherence of Incoherent Discourse (Report, 1985)
- Making Computational Sense of Montague's Intensional Logic (Courant computer science report, 1976)
- A Metalanguage for Expressing Grammatical Restrictions in Nodal Spans Parsing of Natural Language (Courant computer science report, 1974)