American Journal of Computational Linguistics Microf ichc 56 
PROCESSING CASE 
YORICK WILKS 
PRESENT ADDRESS: DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS, 
UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX 
COLCHESTER, ESSEX, ENGLAND 
Association for Computational Linguistics 
ABSTRACT 
This paper has three purposes: firstly, to describe how case 
information IS distributed in the preference semantics system of 
language understahding, and tc show what practical use is made of that 
informatloq. Second] y, to argue that that way of doing thlngs has 
adv,~ntages over tao alternatives: (a) putting all case information In 
one place, and (b) not using any case information at all, but only t.he 
names of English prepositidns. Thirdly, I wish to- use the positions 
established earl ler counter 
some recent arguments by and 
others that the noti~n of case is not in fact functioning in any 
natural language understanding systems that fall within what could be 
called the Artificial Intelligence paradigm. A theme that recurs in 
I1 
the paper is that tendentlous distlb1ctions, such as surface", "deep" 
and "conceptual" case, must be expounded in processing terms if tbey 
are to make sense. 
The paper owes a great deal to discussions with Eugene Chanliak, 
Graham Ritcshie, Marg~ret Klng and Frederick Parker-Rhodes. The 
mistakes, as usual, are a11 my own6 
TABLE OF CONTENFS 
Introduction ...................... 4 
.............. Case i.n preference semanti.cs 10 
. . . . Case in formuias - 10 
Case in paraplates ................ 32 
....... .... Case extraction i.nferences 47 
Charniak'sbriefoncase ................ 58 References ....................... 67 
INTRODUCTION 
This paper is Intended to describe the case handling procedures of 
the preference semantics (Wilks 1972, 1975a)system of natural language 
understanding by giving a more complete account than In prevlous papers, 
and In particular I shall distinguish the application of case to the 
parsing of preposition structures In Engl~sh from subseqyent inferences 
using case, Case information in thls system IS stored in two dlffercnt 
places: in what are called formulas and paraplates respectively. I 
shall argue a reasonable*processing account of case requires this. I 
shall wntrast this positlon briew with those of Schank and Riesbeck, 
who seem to me to advocate a single type of case information, and a no 
case view respectively. More importantly, Ihshall argue against a 
9 
recent position of Charniak that Artificial Intelligence (AI) natural 
language systems do not in fact make any use d case, I shall dlscuss 
his arguments and urge that, although there are systems to whlch his 
arguments do apply, they do not apply to the one described here, at least 
hot if case is to have anyth~ng like its normal meaning, 
The use of case informat~on in A1 comes from the work of F~llmore 
(1968), in which the underlying structur,e of a sentence is displayed, 
in essence, as an array of argument values far a predicate, where the 
-redi,:ate is the verb of tk sentenceo The corresponding values are 
the case parts of the sentence, each of a different case type, and, 
for any given verb, the general pattern of cases it takes is called 
the case frame of that verb. 
Thus, if the horizontal lines denote the verb predicate, the case 
frame for "break" could be written as: 
( - - -- - - - 
OBJECT (AGENT) (INSTRLJIENT) ) 
which means that this verb must take an object, and cen but need not 
take an agent and instrument case. These latter two cases are option- 
al here and that optionallty is indicated by the parentheses round the 
- 
case names. So, on this view: 
(1) John broke 
would be ill-formed because it gives us only the (optional) agent of 
breaking, which is John, but omits the obligatory object that is broken. 
Thls analysis can be contrasted with "hit", whose frame would be 
( - - - - - - - OBJECT (AGENT 1 INSTRUMENT) ) 
where the overlapping brackets mean that the two cases,agent and 
instrumental are semi-optional, in that at least one of the two must 
appear. Thus 
The window hit 
would be ill-formed on that view because, although it contains the 
obligatory object, it contains neither the agent nor the instrument 
of the hitting, However, 
(3) The window broke 
would be perfectly well-formed with respect to the frame for 'break', 
This sort of case analysis 1s normally zalled deep case *to distinguish 
it from the surface case manifestation of word inflections in Greek, 
Lati'n and German etc. It should be noted, too, that here, as through- 
out the paper, no attempt is made to stick to the actual list of case 
names used by any author, since these vary sd much from one to the next, 
and no point of principle hangs on arYy particular list of cases, 
~illrnore' s linguls tic theory is, naturally enough, a generative 
one in that the procedures it suggests would be those for generating 
sentences from an underlying structure of a verb plus its case argument 
values. What the surface form would be, glven any partlc~lar under- 
lying structure, is determined By what Fillmore calls the "subject 
selection rule", which says that, if there is an agent, that will be 
the subject of any active sentence produded; if there is no agent but 
there is an instrument, then that will be the subject and so on. 
In this paper, I Ishall concentrate, as is normal if not desirable 
in A1 and computational linguistics, Qn questions of analys~s rather 
than generation. The general problen in analysis (that is not emphasised 
in generation) is that of the selection restrictions on the 
cases, which can be illustrated by looking at the simplest of the 
systems using case analysis (Simmons 1973). Simmons wishes to map 
all of the sentences (4) (7) onto the same semantic network 
because a11 four, in some sense, refer to the szme event: 
(4) John broke the window with a hammer 
(5) John broke the window 
(6) The hammer broke the window 
(7) The window broke 
All are perfectly well-formed with respect to the franc for "break1' 
given earlier. Simmons parses such sentences using an augmented trans- 
ition network (Woodst1970) and a notion of case paradigm due to Celce- 
Murcia (1972). This paradigm, for active forms of a verb llke "break", 
has the form: 
(8) AGENT * OBJECT INSTRUMENT 
AGENI * CBJECT 
INSTRUMEIJT * OBJECT 
OBJECT A 
The lines of (8) are patterns that must match input word strings 
in left right order so as to assign the cases they contain, The lines 
of (8) match each of (4) - (7) in turn, where marks the posltion of 
the verb (break) in each line of the paradigm, The lines of (8) are 
no more than the possible case combinations allowed by the case frame 
11 
for "break" together with an analytic version of the subject selection 
rule", which always makes the Agent the first (subject) item In any 
line of the paradigm (8) in which it occurs, There is no need for the 
lines of (8) to be ordered In their application to input sentences, 
although there is one additional. item of information required before 
they can be applied at all: the selection restrictions, These tell 
us what it is to be an agent of "break": in Simons's scheme a noun 
marked ANIMATE, The selection restrictions attached to the cases in 
(8) are essential t~ the application of the paradlgrn, for only thus 
could we know that "~ohn" in (4) was matched by ACZENT in the flrst 
line of (8). It should be noted that the restriction of AGENT in (8) 
to nouns m%rked ANIMATE is not necessarily a restriction peculiar to 
'break', but rather to the class of verbs for which (8) is the (active) 
paradigm. Conversely, the ANIMATE restriction on AGEPU'Ts in (8) IS 
not necessarily on AGENTS as such although it might turn out to be so, 
These points will be important when we come to Chamiak's arguments 
later. 
Notice too, that there are not two different ways In which a 
sentence can be ill-formed with respect to the paradigm: one with 
respect to selection restrictions and one with respect to the case 
frame (as has been argued by Bruce 1975). The case frame expressed 
by the paradigm, and the corresponding selection restrictions are 
indivisible. So, for example, 
(9) John broke 
is ill-formed with respect to the case frame for "break" as explained 
earlier, However, if we look at that fact in procedural /terms, such 
as those provided by Simmons' paradigm, we cannot deem that failure as 
one of matching a line of (8) as distinct from (Bruce's view) not 
meeting the select~on restr~ctions PHYSOB , say, on the case OBJECT 
on the fourth line of (8). For the selection restriction associated 
with a case defines what ~t is to match a corresponding line of (8). 
The only way in which a sentence could independently fall to match any 
line in the paradigm of (8) would be the trivial one of having some 
number of arguments (say, four or zero) not corresponding to any line 
of (8), 
CASE IN PREFERENCE SEMANT?CS 
Case in formulas 
This system builds meaning structures and inference rules from 
eighty primitive semantic elements, These are of eight types, one of 
which consists of the case elements as follows; 
*DIRE the general DIRECTION ca'se element. Like all the primitive 
elements whose names are preceded by an asterisk, it is equivalent to 
a class of other primitives, in this case the following four: 
TO direction towards 
FROM direction away from something 
UP in an upwards direction 
THRU direction through some other thing. 
INST the INSTRUMENT case, indicating the instrument used in some 
action 
FOR the RECIPIENT case, indicating the normal recipient of an 
act ion 
IN the CONTAINMENT case, indicating what contains some other thing 
LOCA 
the SPATIAL LOCATION case, indicating the place of an activity 
or thing 
TLOCA 'the TIME LOCATION else, 
indicating the time location of an 
activity 
WAL 
the -, PURPOSE case, indicating the purpose of an activlty 
SOUR the SOURCE case, indicating the substance from which some 
object came 
WAY the MANNER case, ~ndicatlng the manner or method by which an 
activity was performed 
OBJE the OBJECTIVE case, indicatang the object of an action 
SUBJ the AGENT case,. indicating the ins ti gator of an action, 
'subject' here being taken to refer to a semantic, rather than 
a surface, subject 
WITH the ACCOMPANIMENT case, indicating the acco~npanier of an entity 
POSS the POSSESSIVE case, indicating who owns some thlng 
These case primitives are ultimately the names of relations in 
the system of semantic representstion, just as in the familiar semantlc 
net representations (Simmons 1973) that indicate the instrumentality of 
say, the action of striking by a labelled arc such as: 
strike 'hammer 
The representations described here are not of this superficial form 
for three reasons: 
a) 
Semantic nets do not immediately suggest their associated 
processes, whereas the representations here are intended to be 
directed towards the processes that operate on them. 
b) 
There is a clear distinction in the present system of represent- 
12 
ation between the knowledge stored and the patterns sought in language, 
on the one hand, and the language text actually represented found, on 
the other; where the latter may not exactly match what was being looked 
for, This distinction 1s not always easy to work into a semantic net 
structure. 
c) 
The present system of representation is intended to be more 
"habitable" in Watt's (1968) sense of providing a language of semantic 
representation that is appropriate to the way humans express themselves. 
That is a highly subjective notion, perhaps, but here it is taken to 
require at least a dynamrc, or readable structure, which nets do not 
haverThj srequirement rests upon another assuniption: that our 
representation must have the "one thing after another" feature that 
text,$ have, rather than being static and timeless like most semantic 
nets (thoughdNorman and Rumelhart (1975) hdve constructed nets 
containing ordered assertions, though these are no longer semantic 
nets in the classic sense). 
The case primitives function within a semantic dependency 
grammar (Hays ?964), intended to express the meaning of word senses 
and, by extension, of texts. Each of the casg primitives above will 
have a dependent, which is a type of entity for all the case prirfi- 
itives except WAY and GOAL, which take an assertion as dependent, 
The case primitive and its dependent (entity or assertion) fom a 
case group which is in turn dependent on a primitive action (except 
for WITH and POSS which depended on an entity 
, and may therefore 
.be only semi-cases). 
This is best seen by example of the first 
structure in the system, the formula - which expresses word sense 
in 
the dictionary, 
The formula for the action sense of "break" is as 
follows: 
The general structure of such formulas has been explained In 
Wifks (1968, 1972, 1975a, 1975b). They are intended to express the 
fnterlingual meaning of the sense of the word, and the primitives that 
comprise them are intehded to be interlingual (as are Fillmore's cases) 
even though they happen to be mostly Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. 
'E'ormulas are trees of left-rignt dependencies but the dependence is 
interpreted differently acccrding to the type of the subformula. 
We have already mentioned the dependence of an entity (or assertion) 
on a case primrtive to form a case group, such as (*'tIb% SUBJ), which 
means that an agent is (preferably) human. These case groups (except 
WITH and POSS) a11 depend rightwards on some action, so that (*HUM SUN) 
in (10) depends on the main primitive actioh of the whole formula STRTK, 
The whole formula is to be interpreted as "breaking" being a ~'k~~~ing, 
done preferably to a *PHYSOSJect, and by a *HUMan SUBJect, using an 
INSTrument that is a THING and with the GOAL of CAUSing the *PINSOBJect 
to BE NOTWHOLE. 
This interpre~ation can be constructed from the following _generaL 
rules for the building and interpretation of formulas: 
i) Each subgroup in the formulacons~sts of a left mernber depending 
on a right member, and left or right may be either a single prim~tive 
element or another group, Thus, in (*EIUM SUBJ) we have a case group, 
known to be such because the rightmost member of its pair is the gover- 
nor and SUBJ is the primitive element naming the Agent caqe. One 
level higher (*HUM SUBJ) . depends on STRIK, the main primitive of the 
whole formula, to form an assertion group. Similarly, each of the 
other maln subparts of the formula (whose heads are respectively 
OBJE, INST an6 GOAL) depends on STRIK to form in each case an action 
group which always consists of an action and any case group that is 
not an Agent group (nor a POSS or WITH group), 
ii) 
The dependency within a group 1s interpreted differently accord- 
ing to the type of the group. 
Within an acti~n graup ((*PKYSOB OBJE) 
STRIK) the dependepce is that of an action's object on the action and 
OWE does no more than name that relation. In the cases group 
- 
(*PHYGOB OBE) the relation internally is no sore than the preferred 
type of case fLller Cphysical object) on the name of the case. With 
a substantive group like (LINE THIYG) the dependence is inter- 
preted as specification, i.e. linear object. *PHYSOB is a name ~f a 
class of primitive elements which includes THING, but also other 
primitives like MAN. In case subfarniulas, e&c@pt afid WAY, 
the leftmost item is always the preferred entlty type, to fuyctlon in 
the corresponding rightwards-nwed case. This lef trnost item 19, if 
you will, the 'selection restriction' for that case role for whatever 
action is being coded: i. e. in the formula above, for 'break'. The 
reader should not confuse this with being a restriction for the 
associated primitive STRIK, This point will be discussed later, but 
for now the formula is to be taken as no more than a formal expression 
of the meaning of the action 'break' that can be used in subsequent 
It 
inference and parsing routines, However, selection restriction" 
here is to be read as Ipreferring the agent of "break" to be hurnaa1,say, 
I have described elsewhere (Wilks 197 c) how when text representations 
are assembled that will be only a preference on the agent of "break", 
and the system will not baulk at assembling a representation for "The 
dog broke his bowl" where the agent is not human, though the system 
would prefer a hwnan agent if it could find one. I write of 
"assembling representationsu because the elements like *Hull in the 
formula above are not slots to be filled by, in this case, the agent 
of some breaking, The formulas are 'blueprints' for how represent- 
ations are to b. assembled elsewhere from whole formulas. When a 
representstion for "The man broke .the window" is assembled the whole 
formula above (together with a PAST element) will stand at some app- 
topriate node of a higher-level representation. 
It is this feature of the system that explains why the head, or 
principal, element of a formula is easily accessible at one end QE it 
--rather than buried in the center as it would be if the formula w2reL 
in SVO form, rather than SOV form, as above, Formulas exist for all 
parts of speech so, for ex@mple, a formula for an entity will have not 
a primitive action head like STRIK, but an entity head like THING or MAN 
or STUFF (for substance). Note too, that the preference restrictions 
for case need not be simple as above but can be as complex as required, 
including further case restrictions recursively. So, for example, if 
we had a formula i3r 'sew' it might well have a case sub-fomrrula 
to be interpreted as: done with an INSTrument that is preferably a 
LINEar THING WITH (accompaniment case) an aperture (THRU PART). 
iii) In order to makc the formula "habitablet' the agents and objects 
are compressed, in that they can be agknts and objects for more than one 
primitive action, Agents and objects of actions in a formula are 
normally sought to the left of the primitive action element. 
If the 
whole formula is for an action (as above for 'break') the two le§t- 
most subparts of the formula will always be the preferred agent and 
object of the head primitive, in that order. For any actions 
within the formula (such as CAUSE in the formula for 'break') its 
preferred agent and object are normally the next agent and object to 
its left -- which of course, as in the case of 'break' may turn out 
- 
to yield the same entity as the preferred agent of the whole formula, 
though this need not be the case. Moreover, in the case of actions 
within a formula (i.e. not constituting the head) the agent need not be 
marked though the object must be if it is an entity type. This 
proviso does not apply In the formula above since the agent is the 
same for CAUSE and STRIK, and CAUSE takes an assertion as object, but 
within a formula a group (MAN STRIK) would always be interpreted as an 
group, MAN being an unmarked agent of STRIK, and not as a 
man being struck which would require a marked object in the action 
group i , e, ( (MAN OBJE) STRIK) . 
All this implies that some of the subgroups in the formula for 
break' are not the apparent ones i.e, the dependent of GOAL, as 
mentioned earlier, must be an assertion, whereas it is brncketted to 
only (((NOTWHOLE K1ND)BE)CAUSE) which can only (during inference 
procedures,called 'extraction' to be described later) become an 
assertion group by the addition of an agent found to the left namely 
(*HUM SUBJ), CAUSE also requires a dependent object that is an 
assertian (hence (*PH'ISOB OBJE) will not do as its abject 'taken alone) 
and can take, a,s dependent of that group, an entity to its left marked 
either OBJE or SUBJ kfnichever is closest, Hence the dependent of 
((NOTWHOLE KIND)BE) is *PHYSOB and the "'real" dependent of CAUSE 
(found by inference) is (*PHYSOB ( (NOTWHOLE KIND) BE) ) and the real 
dependent of GOAL is ( (*HUM SUBJ) (*PHYSOB ( (NOTWHOLE KIND) BE) ) )CAUSE) . 
This compresai& of expression can be argued to be "habitable" 
for a formula maker, It also avoids to a large extent the defect 
of some fuller conceptual representations of this general type, pointed 
out by Sandewall (1972), that if the entities like (*HbM SUBJ) are put 
into the representation many times but are inteqded to refer to THE 
SAME IlUMAN, then this must be indicated as it frequently was not, 
Where such identity must be specific in formulas,but cannot be achieved 
by the above compressed expressions, it is obtained by means of the 
primitives SAME and NOTSAME: the same (or not), that is to say, as 
the first encountered token of the associated primitive when working 
in from the top level of the formula, One point that should emerse 
from this is that those.who want to use case names as the names of 
relations, as in semantic nets, and also deal with surface language, 
must be prepared td extract a number of such relations from a single 
occurrence of certain formula subparts, Thus, the formula for 'break' 
ab~ve would contain not only the net links: 
\ 
--., 
*HUM SUBJ STRIK 
*HUM CAUSE 
but also the quite other type of link 
\ 
*HUMy SUBJ break 
which asserts that the preferred agent of breaking will be human. 
However the top link must not be interpreted as saying thzt the 
preferred agent of the primitive STRIK is human, because that is not 
an assertion in the system at all. All the top link can say is that 
the primitive action STRIK sometines takes human agents. In soae 
other formula, for another surface action whose underlying primitive 
was also STRIK, the preferred agent might be "ANI, a wider class. 
Hence, in this system there are not specific semantic restrictions on. 
the dependents of the primitives, as in, say Schank (1973), 
In thp present system, such a restriction could emerge only 
inductively from a survey of a considerable body of formulas, It is 
worth clarifying this issue here: what do underlying representations 
constitute case frames for? The issue is related to two others: 
- 
first 
, the different roles of case frames in analysis and gen*ratian, 
and secot~dfy, the procedural opposition between case frame blueprints, 
like formulas3 and the 'fuller*' representations of generative sunantic- 
> 
ists trees and Schankian ~conceptua~izations'. 
First 
, let us note that it has neyer been as clear as mrght be 
wished what case frames awe for in Fillmore's work, The normal intro- 
ductory account given earlier states that they are for surface verbs 
like 'break', but in Fillmore (1975) he argues that it is not so simple 
because he would want to admit sentences like: 
(12) Noon found Harry sleeping 
as perfectly well-formed, while not taking account of the usgge in the 
%entive part of the case frame for 'find'. On the other hand, he 
wishes to avoid the position of saying that case frames are for under- 
lying verbs like semantic primitives in formulas, or the underlying 
verbs of Generative Semanti~srepresentations which avoid cases alto- 
gether, as in the following for "I broke the glass with a rock". 
I have followed Fillmore's (1975j device here of making (13) 
easier to read by putting ~t in SVO rather than the usual VSO 
(predicate first) form, It will be seen that it is pretty similar 
to the above fnmula for "break1' except that, in order to avoid case 
notation, they have had to resort to such philosophically suspect 
devices as separating the act of using from the basic 'act' inside 
the tree, even though there was really only one action in the whole 
business 
An extreme version of the view that case frames belong only to 
the underlying structure is Schank's (1973) view that case frames awe 
for underlying primitive acts and that all cases that a primitive act 
takes, it takes obligatorily. 
Thus, for example, Schank's primitive act TRANS expresses the 
underlying content of such actions as "buy", "sell" and "take", and .ke 
would begin the representation of 
(14) The man took a book 
as (Schank 1973, p. 196) 
-to. man 
Q 
(15) man TRANS + book 
<4someone from 
11 11 11 I1 
where the arrows labelled R and 0 indicate Recipient and Objective 
..- - 
case respectively, and the - Agentive case is in fact indicated by the 
I1 
double arrow linking man", the agent, to the act TRANS. The details 
here need not concern us, the point being that Schank is setting up 
case frames, not for surface verbs of English, like Fillmore (1968), 
but for these primitive acts, of which he has about twelve. 
From the point of view on case expressed in the system described 
here, both these strong positions have drawbacks, indeed they have 
complementary ones, In .the first place,  illm more's (1968) system, 
with the aid of which he wants to contrast verbs by means of their 
frames, only becomes significant if Interpreted with the aid of some 
non-surface'representation of actions. So, for example, Charniak has 
pointed out (personal communication) that the earlier contrast of the 
frames for "hit" and "break" is significant only if there is Pome 
common, underlying, action that the two verbs share, and which can be 
thought of as being substituted for the horizontal line in the frames. 
Eor, 
if that is no& so, theq the contrast of the frames for "kT11" and 
11 
murder" is of no more inkerest than the contrast between "kill" and 
I I remember", or any other random verb, In other words, it is only 
because the two vtrbs plready' have something in common, over and above 
their case frames, that the comparison has point. Thus, the contrast 
of the case frames of only surface verbs is, if unsupplemented, un- 
satisfactory, 
Conversely, there may be certain problems inherent In Schank's 
attempt to both (a) relate surface verbs to underlying primitive 
actions, and then discuss only the latter, and (b) at the same time 
make all participants in the case frames for primitives obligatory. 
11 
So, for example, Fillmore would express the case frame for see" as 
(OBJECT DATIVE) and for "learn" (OBJECT AGENT). While Schank (1973 
pp. 220-1) expresses both verbs by an underlying primitive PITRANS 
together with a case frame, for the primitive, containing at least A, 
0 and R (Fillmore would call R by D), The individual letters for 
cases assigned by different authors need not detain us, nor need their 
contrasting interpretation of the case names, for the present point is 
the per£ectly general one that, whether or not Fillmore is right with 
this particular verb pair, it is highly likely that there are pairs 
L_. 
of surface verbs like this one whose surface case frames are different 
and whose Schankian primitive act is the same, 
It follows-from (b) above that, for Schank, their "deep" case 
frame must therefore be the same too. 
Since, for him, every surface 
vetb has a main act expressing it, there is clearly going to be a 
problem with this consequence of (b) unless he is prepared to say that 
there is no necessary relation at all between a verb's case frame and 
the case frame of its corresponding primitive act. 
It may well be 
possible to defend such a position within his theory, but he will still 
be left with the difficulty that: verbs with quite different semantic 
behaviour (for Fillmorian case differences ate not super£ ici81) have 
identical behaviour in his system, There is bound to be a lack of 
discrimination consequent upon Schank's all-cases-are-obligatory view 
unless some careful avoiding action is taken, that he has not yet, to 
my knowledge embarked upon, 
However, Schank would probably not wish to take advantage of this 
last possibility because he does not himself hold the view that 
11 
conceptual case is entirely independent of surface structure consid- 
erations", as was wrongly attributed to him by Bruce (ibid.p,338), 
and for the simple reason that he intends that case structure in 
conceptualizations shall resolve the case ambiguities present in 
English preposition constructions. 
Schank (1973) makes this quite 
clear, and I shall return tc~ ilt when discussing preposition construct- 
ions in the next section. Thus, since Schankian case frames for 
primitives are - not independent of all surface structure considerations, 
he does have the problem above presented by the contrast of "see" and 
11 
learn", 
The burden of the last arguments have been to show that three 
different positioas on the question of "what are case frames - for?" 
are unsatisfactory : 
(i) that they are simply for surface verbs : Fillmore's 1968 
position, argued against along the lines sketched above as early as 
Schank (1969), 
( ii) that underlying structures containing primitive actions do not 
require case frames at all: the Generative Semaqtics position, for 
example, Postal (1971), 
(iii) that underlying structures containing primitive actions are case 
frames for those primitives and, moteover, are all obligatory case 
frames: Schank's position just discussed. 
Let me now restate the position of the present system, as it 
concerns formulas, 
Formulas are meaning structures for surface word 
senses, 
Formulas for surface verbs can be interpreted as case frame$ 
- 
for the verbs, in that they contain case subparts at the top level 
(i,eo depending directly on the head action primitive) thdt the formula 
maker has considered necessary to express as part of the meaning of 
the verb. Thus, the formula for "break" given earlier (10) contains 
case subparts at the top level (i.eo depending directly on the head 
primitive STRIK) INSTrument, GOAL, OBJect and Agent(=underlylng SUBJect), 
The formula maker is concerned only with specifying, as best as he can, 
the semantic preferences of the particular surface word in question, 
If it were a verb he would semantically specify the preferred agent, 
say, of that action, witbno implicit reference to agenthood as such. 
The same goes for the other cases: he would attempt to put those cases 
into a fopula that he th~ught necessary to specify the meaning of the 
action, Consider 
(16) He lives in Lugano 
I 
and 
(17) He drank some Barbera in Lugano, 
It is logically true that one must, if one drinks, do it some- 
where, but no one wohld hold that the notion of location yas involved 
in explaining the meaning of drinking, However, one might well hpld 
that it was impossible to explain the notion of living, in the sense 
of inhabiting, without making clear that it was done in some location. 
11 
Thus only in the formula for live" would we expect a location case 
subpart (o.,..LOCA), 
This description of the insertion of case specification into the 
formula for some given surface verb does not correspond in any clear 
way to Fillmore's obligatory or optional distinction, though it seems 
clear that any formula should contain at least - Fillmore's obligatory 
cases for that surface verb and, as we saw , (10) above, for "break", 
does this, since the qnly obligatory case for "break" is object, 
The main reason for this difference remains the essentially 
generative quality of a Fillmorean case frame, 
Much sophisticated 
linguistic argument in the past decade has gone into aptempting to 
prove that the term "gen'erate" is neutral Getween "analysetl and 
11 produce". 
One of the best efforts is to be found in~yons' (1968, 
p.155), But, although it is easy t~ see the productive role of, say, 
 illm more's subject selection rule (SSR), it is very hard to see what 
analytic signrficance it could have; 
the surface subject is, after all, 
usually revealed by simple methods not requiring the notion of case. 
The SSR tells one how to cho~se the subject 8iven - the case structure 
and in that sense is inherently generative in its non-neutral sense 
J 
meaning 'productive'. The system presented here however is inherently 
analytic (its productive aspects have been described in(He~skovits 
(1973)), and this accounts for a great deal of the difference of 
approach to the notipn of meaning structure5 Those with practical 
acquaintance with sentence analysis and production will need li~tle 
persuasion that the two processes are not in any sense simple inverses 
of each other (nor does Fillmore himself believe they are, see  ill- 
more 1972 p, 23). 
Charniak has argued (1975) that the method af formula coding 
results in top level case subformulas that cannot appear in the 
surface form of the verb, and he cites (ibid, p,16) the formula .for 
"drink" : 
where the containment group (SELF IN) indicates that the liquid object 
(FLOW STUFF) is moved into the animate agent (SELF), and the directlon 
group ((MAN(Tmu FART))TO) indicates that this movement is in the 
direction of a human aperture, These two groups appear at the top level 
of the formula, and thus dependent on the head primitive action C~~~~. 
However, later inferential procedures of extraction (see below) would 
show, 8s with "break" (10) earlier, that the real dependency of the two 
groups was on MOVE, However, the requirement 1s observed that the 
Fillmorean obligatory cases (only Agent presumably) for "dr~nk" appear 
at the top level, and the other case groups - containment and directlon - 
most certainly could appear at the surface with 'drink' as in: 
(19) John drank the beer up thrwgh his nose with a straw and into 
his brain, 
where both cases appear at the surface. Charniak is confusing what 
can appear at the surface with what it would normallxbe redundant to 
say. 
The diifelrence is made clear in (19) if we choose to say some- 
thing remarkable, and false. 
In this section on formulas I have tried to justify the inter- 
rol e of case description formulas : by claiming 
BOTH that 
they give a meaning structure that, under inferences processes, 
can 
provide a real underlying structure for text AND that they must 
include 
enough of the surface case behaviour (of the verb meaning being expressed) 
to give procedural power in analyzing the input surface sentences. It 
seems to me essential to preservehoth these roles, and to avoid the 
path taken, in their different manners, by Schank, Fillmore and the 
Generative Semanticists, qf displa$ing a full underlying structure 
directly without the processes that reach it. I argued earlier that 
each of those three gave only a filled-in or- fina1,structurg 
which in 
itself gives no hints as to how you get there. 
The generative linguist argues, of course, that he is not trying 
to reach such a stfucture at all, but to generate surface structbres 
C_ 
from it, and the "artificial intelligence critique" of this aspect of 
- 
generative linguistics is familiar by now (my own version is in  ilks 
" 
1975~). The wqy in which Schank emphasises a filled-in structure is 
a quite different and more interesting matter, His conceptualizations 
are filled-in structures, with no procedural capacity. 
However, at 
the back of his early papers (i.e. the Appendix to Bchank et a:. 1970) 
are dictionary entries or skeletons for conceptualizations, which 
contain selection restrictions on the slots in the conccp tualizations 
(and in (Schank 1973, p. 229)). These objects are much more fund- 
amental to his approach than is generally realized, for they do give it 
more procedural power than one could envisage from looking only at the 
final conceptualizations, 
Their role is somewhat like that of the formulas for actions: they 
are blue-prints showing what the system would like to be the usage and 
context of a given action. But the difference from formulas is this: 
the Schank dictionary entry has slots, marked, say, HUMAN which, when 
they are all filled by surface vords 
yield 
the filled-in concept- 
ualization, The formula too has case specifications, like (*AN1 SUBJ), 
but these are not slots,to be filled in, but directions as to how to 
fill in an agent slot in a higher older entity called a template whlch 
consists of whole formulas: essentially, a network based on an agent 
formula, an action formula and an object fdrmula (although any of these 
may be dumi es) . Schank has no equivalent to formulas for nouns or 
adjectives, or any part of speech other than verbs. 
Thus, if the formula (10) for "break" is placed at the action node 
of a Lemplate, its agent preference txies to ensure that a formula for 
an animate entity will go at the corresponding agent node. There is 
a metric for this initial parsing and matching described in (Wilks 
1972, 1975a,, 1975bJ. The role of the formulas as data for parsing 
I 
here is as follows: templates, matched onto sentences and clauses 
expressed as strings of formulas, try to pick up surface subjects 
and 
use the formulas as blue prints for  electing the best template, by try- 
ing to ensure that the surface subject is also the agent. 
In the 
initial matching of the  he harmner broke the window'' this will not be 
11 
possible because the formula for hammer", 
the surface subject, will be 
placed at the first (or agent) node of the template, However, since 
the formula for "break1' will be at the corresponding action notle the 
system will know at my point in later processing that the surface 
subject is not the underlying (animate) agent as preferred by the 
"break" formula at the action node. of khe same template, This clash 
will, as we shall see, lead to later ext'raction inferencing that deals 
'with the ei!"gatiw paradigm in a unikrm manner. But this clash - is 
only observable in a system which builds structures that retain thelr 
preferences built in: i.e. not in one like Schanks' that just fills ia 
11 
slots in dictionary entries. Fillmore's anomalous Naon found Harry 
tl 
sleeping" causes no trouble here: the formula for find" expresses a 
preference for an animate agent, In the template for this sentence, 
It 
that is not satisfied by the surface subject (a formula for noon", 
with a head (WN POINT)) but no case frame is violated, 
Formulas are not used as parsing mechanisms to deal with 
- 
preposition structures in English, This is done by other structures 
called paraplates, to which I will now turn, so as to givc a fuller 
account of them than in the past, in (Wilks 1975a), In what follows 
templates will be written in short form: not as triples of complex 
formula trees, but as square brackets round the surface phrase or 
clause that the template is for, The words are clustered within 
the brackets so as to represent the three nodes of the template, 
Case in paraplates 
Paraplates are structures employed to assert a connectivity 
between two templates, typically between a template representing a main 
clause and one representing a prepositional phrase, Thus, if we were 
analysing 
(20) John left his clothes at the cleaners 
which would be represented initially in the system by two templates, 
the correct paraplate, when applied, would assert a spatial location 
case ( LOCA) tie between the two templates as follows: 
[John left his + clothes] 
LOCA 
G[( n = Dumv Agmt) at the + cleaners] 
Each paraplate corresponds to one of the cases in the inventory, which 
is the same as the inventory used to construct formulas. Many para- 
plates, however, may correspond to a single case, A paraplate has the 
form of two template-skeletons connected by a label indicating the 
case expressed by the paraplate, where by template-skeleton I mean an 
entity like a tepplate except that, instead of a formula at each of its 
threenodes, it has a function rangkg over formulas. Any template 
that ma?ches either part of the paraplate mst have formulas that 
satisfy the functiops in the corresponding part of the paraplate, If 
the functions in both parts of a paraplate are satisfied by a pair of 
templates (and the template for the prepositional phrase is nlormally 
considered to be the right-hand part, though this need not correspond 
to actual order of occurrence in text') then the case label of the para- 
plate is asserted in the representation as holding between the two 
templates. 
In earlier descriptions I have distinguished paraplates from 
inference rules, but in fact they can perfectly well be seen as a form 
of inference rules as Schanis has argued. However, the essential role 
of paraplates is as parsing structures for prepositional phrases. 
So, if we were representing "~ohn picked up the statue made oul 
of wood on the table after lunch" we would expect paraplates for the 
various case dependencies to create ties as follows: 
[John picked + up the + statue1 
2 C made + out + of wood 1 
c on the + table 1 
Y-~c [ after 
TLOCA 
luach I 
where SOUR indicates source case, and TLOCA, time location. 
The preference semantics system applies paraplates immediately 
after matching templates and chaosing the ''most preferred" ones (Wilks 
1975@). In operation, the system inputs small English paragrdphs on- 
line, produces a semantic structure for them, and from that generates a 
French translation (Wilks 197313, 1975a; ~eljSkovits 1973), Thus, as 
regards Engliqh, the system is an analytic one, and is faced with the 
standard problem that a single English preposition can introduce many 
cases (and can, of course, often be translated by a number of French 
prepositioris depending on the case). 
Let us consider "by", fudctioning in the following sentences, all 
of which may be considered to start, like (23), with "He left Lugano 
by ..,", where I have indicated the apparent (though disputable) case 
of the last clause at the right of each line: 
(23) He left Lugano by courtesy of the police 
(24) by Cornano 
(25) by car 
(26) by stealth 
(27) by Monday nigQt 
(28) by following the arrows 
(29) by stezling a boat 
SOUR 
- 
TO 
INST 
WAY 
TWCA 
WAY 
rnST 
Paraplates are six-place entities, not all of whose places need be 
filled, corresponding to Agerit-of-first-template, Action-of-first- 
template, Object-of-first-template, and so on for the second template. 
Here are four paraplates that should match onto the templates for the 
sentences above with corresponding numbers, Like the sentences, the 
paraplates will all have the same left-hand side, which is written only 
(24) ' (*&I) (MOVE) (WHERE POINT) -=> 1 1 
WAY 
-+ 
(WHERE LINE) 
(*DO) (WHERE SIGN) 
The parentheses containing the formula parts are all to be inter- 
preted as matching onto correspondibg part of a template if and only if 
the latter has the mentioned subparts as its head of formula. Thus 
paraplate (24)' matches (24) because the formula for 
"he1' has head MAN included by *AN1 
"left" has as head MOVE 
1 I Lugano" has a head containing subpart (WHERFL POINT) 
I1 
autostrada'' 
11 (WHERE LINE) 
$ 
and so on for the other correspondences of sentences and paraplates, 
which will then assert the case label tie written at the right hand end 
of the sentence in each case (and on the corresponding arrow in the 
paraplate) as hcildipg between the correspon'ding template pair, 
$ 
is a dummy place holder, *DO covers a wide class of actioni, 
as does *REAL of entities, 
The paraplates above (24) ' to (29) ' are a sublist of those stacked 
under the name of the preposition "by" and under the primitive action 
- 
MOVE that occurs in action position of the left side of each paraplate, 
There will also be other sublists of paraplates stored for "by" under 
other primitive actions, For example, 
(30) This painting is by Titian 
would, during its analysis, also access the paraplates under "by" but 
in this case the sublist under BE, 
The su6lists of paraplates, for a given preposition, that are 
names by different primitive actions are not ordered with respect to 
-- 
each other, However, within any sublist, such as the stack (24) ' to 
(29)' above, the paraplates - are ordered, in that the paraplate at the 
top of the stack is applied first, the next only if that fails and so 
on. Let us return to the example to see why, 
First, INST case is largely a default case for MOVE as it is cued 
in by "by", in that almost any entity can be an instrument here if we 
have no reason to beli@ve it is anything else. Thus the more specific 
(24)' must be applied before (25)' in order to match direction case 
for (24) ' since, if the order were reversed, (25) ' might match with 
what "ought" to match with (24)'. We could imagine something very 
specific in (25)' to match the formula for car (such as a formula 
expressing "thing for moving humans"), but that would risk missing 
rt by cattle truck" which is not normally used for transporting people. 
However, it should be noticed here that the paraplates as described 
do not have the power to detect an anomaly such as "John walked home 
by car". 
The templat&matching that sentence would be quite properly 
tied (as INST) by (25)'. 
Any anomaly in it would have to be revealed 
by later inference, 
This is an example of what Lyons (op.clt.) means 
by the criteria of ahalytic systems bein'g (initially) weaker than those 
of productive systems. 
A stronger but simllar argument applies to putting (28) ' a5ove 
(29)' in a preference stack, given the very weak criterion embodied in 
(29)', that almost any action upon any physical object would satisfy 
in default; and one could extend this to putting a (23)' above a less 
specific (26) ' , 
The main point here is as follows: it is clear that snch para- 
plates must be applied in some order, but it is not clear that they 
should be slmply ordered. For example there is no reason why (28) ' 
should be ordered with respect to (24)'. There is no formal trouble 
expressing a partial ordering of this sort procedurally. I argued in 
(Wilks 1975a) that in many cases we might expect more than one template 
attached to a fragment at this stage and that we would "resolve the 
ambiguity" by preferring whichever template matched higher up such a 
preference stack of paraplates. Order, then, is important in such 
paraplates stacks, even if it turns out to be only partial order. 
If such a stack is only partially ordered then we may, in the case 
of a prepo~itional phrase with two or more current templates competing 
to represent it, expect a - draw at some stage: that is to say, two 
possible templates for the same phrase may match with paraplates that 
are not ordered with respect to each other. Such a situation might 
well correspond to an example such as: 
(31) John jumped on the box 
where the last phrase is genuinely ambiguous between TO and LOCA case 
(in the sense in which the substitution of "onto" for "on" could only 
be interpreted as TO). Thus under "on" we would properly expect 
MOVE (for "jump") paraplates for TO and LOCA to be mutually unordered. 
But let us turn to: 
(32) He beat the girl with a withered arm 
where the case dependence of the prepositional phrase could be either 
instrumental or a specification of which girl it was. In such cases 
one might imagine sorie expectational force to be drawn from the case 
content of the formulas. Thus, if "beatp' has an instrument group in 
its formula, we can conceive of using this fact to decide the draw on 
11 
the grounds that "beat" really expects" an instrument, so why not 
give it one here, and settle the question. And there might indeed 
be somc psychological grounds for doing that, 
But in general, it is clear that the paraplates do not function 
expectationally, except in the sense that by looking first at the 
parablates most preferred in the stack (for a given preposition and 
basic action) one could be said to be expecting it, And that sense 
of "expectation" is perfectly consistent with trying more than one 
candidate template, for a given phrase or clause, at the same time 
against the paraplate stack, as we might have to in. a sentence like 
(33) He beat the dog with a branch 
where we would not only be resolving the cake of the preposit~onal 
phrase, but also, and at the sme time, the word sense of "branch1', 
where the senses of "branch" might give rise to a corresponding number 
of templates and we would always prefer the one that matched further 
up the paraplate stack, as in (Wilks 1975a), 
The reader may have been struck by an overlap of case content 
between the paraplates and formulas, For example, in (10) the form- 
ula for "break", the head action CAUSE has a dependent (THING INST). 
Yet, if we were analyzing the standard sentence "He broke the window 
with a hammer", we would expect to use a stack of paraplates under 
"with", containing a substack whose left-hand action was CAUSE, and 
in it find the appropriate paraplate for tying together the two tem- 
plates for that sentence with an INST tie. This latter information 
might seem to overlap heavlly with that contained in the formula (10) 
and the question arises whether it need be stated twice, 
However, although the tw~ foms of information overlap there is 
no reason to believe they are the same: the paraplates reflect the 
case ambiguity of English prepositions while the formulas reflect only 
the sorts of case inferences one might subsequently want to make (in 
extraction, see below), There is no reason to suppose that one form 
for data can suffice for both these activities, However, Schank does 
make this assumption, and the point here may become clearer after some 
brief recall of his position on the point, 
In (Schank 1973) an account is given of case inferences from a 
primitive action. In 
(34) John shot the girl ~ith a rifle 
the underlying primitive is PROPEL which 5oms the center of any 
conceptualization for "shoot". An obligat'ory INST inference is 
always made for PROPEL or, as ~t, was put earlier, EGT is part of the 
(obligatory) case frame for PROPEL, and also (aS it hawens) an option- 
al part of the Fillmorean surface frame for "shoot". In ~chank's 
scheme Instrumental case iz~volves the insertion of another primitive 
action into the conceptualizationo gut that is not essential to rhe 
present point which is that, for Schank, PROPEL "expects" an instru- 
ment, and criteria can be postulated such that a rifle will fit those 
criteria, in a way that hair will not, as in 
(35) john- shot the 6irl with long hair. 
Thus, for (34) an INST interprcktion is achieved for "with", while in 
(35), by default, the hair is taken as a specification of the girl. 
These solutions are, of course, correct but the different aspects 
of the phenomena do not seem to connect in procedural terns. So, for 
example, Schank is perfectly well aware of the case ambiguity of the 
preposition "with", and even lists four forms of it (ibid, p. 231) 
corresponding to diff~rent cases, aloqg with four 11 c~ncepttual 
realizations for the syntactic item 'with (noun)' ", and specifies 
that they should be checked in order "for conceptual validityu, just 
as paraplates are, The correspondence to the notions described In 
this paper (and in Wilks 1973, in, the same volume) is reasohably 
clear: 
the inference of an instrument from PROPEL corresponds to 
an instrument specification in a formula for "shoot" (and for Schank 
1 
it also comes from shoot': rather than more generally from PROPEL, 
since otherwise it could not be so specific about the instrument being 
a gun, as PROPEL does not deal generally in guns); 
whereas the ordered 
list of case possibilities for "with" is not developed, but corresponds 
roughly to a paraplate stack for "with", 
But here is the problem: in Schank (1973) the two forms of 
information do not actually meet in any general way, Schank mites 
as if the list of possible case functions of "with" is general (i.e. 
action independent), but we have shown that it may well be specific 
to different primitive actions, in that there may well be a separate 
paraplate substack for e~rh primitive action, and may be no short 
gel.yral list of functions of "with", 
$ 
Schank suggests that the 
-- 
example (34) is resolved because PROPEL alld/or "shoot" "expecrs an 
instrument"$ but that piece of information does not, and cannot, take 
accoupt of the pre-existent ambiguity of "with"* . it just happens To 
fit this example, because PROPEL "expects" an instrument and instru- 
mental case is put at the top of the ambiguity list for "with" (ibid, 
But will this coincidence hold in general? If we had been 
dealing not with PROPEL but with some ether primitive, it is not clear 
that the same order for "with" would help, I degcribed earlier a 
I1 
MOm primitive underlying leave" (the primitive and its name are not 
important, on-ly that it is not PROPEL), and considered sentences 
like 
(36) 1 left Lugano with Ywo pounds in my pocket 
11 
which shows that instrumentality is unlikely to be the expectation1' 
for "with" from whatever primitive underlies "leave". Hence Schank' s 
list for. "with" is perhaps specific to its use with PROPEL, and he 
must develop sqme structure analogous to paraplates and not, assume 
$ i.e. a "dictionary entry" for a preposition (like a paraplate sub- 
track) will be a function of a primitive actioxl, 
that the instrumentality of PROPEL suffices: 
My point is simply that any attempt to introduce generality here 
will show that another sort of information structure is required to 
deal with one specific to particular prepositions, and 
that general case inferences (like instrumentali't~f from PROPEL) could 
only help in special cases. 
Any develppment of "wlth" llsts into 
paraplate substack structures would, I believe, show that the expect- 
ational inferences from the primitives play a far smaller role In 
analysis,because the crite~ia they contaxn will have been 
pracedurally expressed somewhere else, 
It is true, however, that there is a strong expectation of a gun- 
instrument from "shoot", and this phenomenon does not fit easlly into 
the paraplate scheme. It might be necessary to ensure that if a 
specific instrument were mentioned in a verb formula then that could 
override subsequent paraplate matching when it; arose, However, such 
specific instruments are not the norm for PROPEL, for this primitive 
presumably also underlies "break" £-or ~chanl;, and there is no such 
presumption of specific instrument with that verb, Indeed, such 
an expectation would be bound to lead to error if any object found 
after "with" were taken as an instrument, rather than using a 
breadth-first approach like paraplates that considers the ranked 
possibilities for that preposition and that action. This is 
especially true for a system like Schanks that has no back-up and no 
possibility of recovery if it goes wrong, 
Formula and palaplate information do sometimes overlap, and I 
suspect SchankTs ~y$tem, that assumes that the same mechanism can 
serve both functions, draws much of its force by choosing an example 
from an area like (34) where they do overlap. But how, in the 
examples of (23)-(29), could we work in genexal with the ambiguity of 
"by" by assuming that MOVE had sdme strong single case expectation, 
over and above the fact that - some case paraplate (like (24)' for TO) 
would have necessarily to Appear at the top of any substack. How 
could Schank express the action-dependent ordering of the rest of the 
substack? 
Another peculiar feature of SchankTs treatment of these phenomena 
is his suggestion (ibid. p. 232) that any ordering of preposition 
functions must go "from the general to the specific". Such limited 
data as are afforded by substacks like (24)' - (29)' indicate that 
it may turn out to be the other way round, because the most general 
(right-hand) criteria tend to appear in the paraplate at .the bottom 
of the substack, 
Much though not all, of what has been sald about Schank's 
approach applies to Riesbeck's (1974) implementation of it. It is 
again a strongly expectational system, in practice in ~iesbeck's 
case, and that leads to the mentioned defects of a depth-first 
appr~ach (if implemented without back-up, as it is),since the whole 
notion of "preference", in case as elsewhere (Wilks 1973a), depends on 
following a number of possibilities breadth-first for a while before 
comparing them and committing the system to only one. 
Only in 
that way could one treat, in a general way, examples like (33) that 
require comparison of how high up a paraplate stack a given inter- 
pretation comes relative to others. 
~lesbeck's system generates expectations (called "requests"f 
from main sentence verbs and uses these to anticipate the case parts 
of the seritence. The main difference from Schank's approach, and 
which makes it a curious implementation of it, is that it deals with 
prepositions not, as one might expect, by primitive actions seeking 
certain cases, but by verbs seeking actual preposition names. So, 
1 t 
for exmple, prevent" he seeks "from" and "by", jus-t as the 
computational linguistic systems of the fifties and sixties did, 
It also has less power than Schank's theory (and paraplates) in that 
Riesbeck specifically says (ibid. p . 95) that requests (including 
preposition requests presumably) are not ordered, 
All this seems to require that all possible preposition 
sequents be stored for every surface verb in the system which 
leaves little scope for semantic generalization (the aim of the 
whole exercise, presumably). 
The strong point of difference, between Riesbeck's system and 
the one described here, concerns the role of uninhibited "expect- 
ations", 
$ 
The examples presented here suggest that one cannot 
base a system simply on the observation that if someone uses "by" 
after "leave" then it will be expected to introduce an instrument, 
For "~e left Lugano by day'' does not fit that and yet cannot be sa4d 
to be violating any axp,ectation, It is simply that the structural 
ambiguity of prepositions muse be accounted Eor in a structured and 
general manner like that offered by the pawaplates. The usefulness 
of expectationg in any field, depends on (a) the high chances of Tt 
being right, and (b) knowing what to do when it is frustrated, and 
~iesbeck's system seems to lack both these desiderata, 
$ For further discussion of the issue, see (Wilks 1975c, pp. 40-45) 
Case extraction inferences 
Extraction inferences produce new template-like forms from the 
case content of formulas embedded in source templates: those that 
have been matched with text sentence f ragrnents, They are styled 
"template-like" here only to indicate that they have not been matched 
with input text, And hence the inferred propositions they represent 
have not necessarily been stated explicitly in the input text, Let 
us first see the effect of doing this, and then the mechanism that 
does it, In what follows, we extend the "short form" of templates 
(obtained by writing square brackets round English words, clustered 
at three nodes to show the distribution of formulas in the full 
template) by writing extractions as English words inside double 
square brackets, 
Let us consider 
(37) John fired at a line of stags with a shotgun 
The result of matching this with templates, applying paraplates as 
described above, and then performing case extractions can be written 
in summary form as fallows: 
C C.Tohn strikes 
C [John uses 
t C C John 
with 
line(of+stags) 3 
stags -- C I 1 
- 
stags 13 GOAL- '1 
1 
c-- 
I LwLL - - 
0 
thing 1 / 
(=shot gun) 
thing 11 CAUSE - 
-CI 
/ 
(=bullet) 
a+ sha tgun 1 
The extracted templates are tied by dotted lines to the source template 
from which they have been extracted, and the case name on the dotted 
line shows the case type of the extraction, The inferences cover both 
those that must be true (like the OBSE extraction, slnce to fire at a 
- 
line of stags 1s necessarily to fire at stags) and those, like the GOAL 
extraction, that are only likely. 
These extracted templates are not printed out (in the way in which, 
MARGIE (Rieger 1974) daes) for they do not in themselves constitute 
testable output. Their role, as described in (Wilks 1973c, 1975a) is 
to be data for further inferences using common-sense inference rules, 
whose function is not essentially connected with case and will not be 
recapitulated here. In the implementation described in those refer- 
ences, the extractions were purely "problem driven", in that they were 
only done when some problem of reference resolution in the text demand- 
ed that the representation be deepened, However, that was a strategic 
consideration in no way a consequence of the nature of extractions: 
they could equally well be data driven, and be executed after every 
matching of a sentence with templates, 
The difference between paraplates and extractions should be clear 
from (38) because it contains both an INST paraplate-imposed tie between 
main clause and preposition phrase templates, - and an INST extraction 
from the main clause template yielding an extracted template equivalent 
to "John uses a thing(=a shotgun)", 
In this way, we are able Lo retain as part of the overall semantlc 
representation of text,and in a message form appropriate for subsequent 
inference, both the surface structure (paraplate INST tie) - and the 
underlying structure (INST extraction inference) - 
As we saw in the 
last section, Schank hblds that these are one and the same thing. 
It 
is true, as we shall see, that in order to extract that John uses a 
shotgun, the extraction mechanism must consult the template tied by the 
)INST paraplate but, as I wguedr in detail, in the last section, this In 
no way establishes that the urfac semantics and the underlying sei~ antic 
structures are one and the same, requiring only a single representatlon, 
The ettraction mechanism consists of a 'specialist'l(to use Winograd's 
tend for each case (and for CAUSE, which is treated as a semigcase 
during extraction). It is called after an initial 
semantic representation 
for a text has been built up as templates tied together by para?lates 
and anaphora ties (See Wilks H73c, 1-975b) An extraction, resulting 
in a new doubJe-square-bracketted template, as in (38) above, is made 
for each case (or CAUSE) sub-formula at the top level of the formulas 
of each source template. 
Let us see how the extractions in (38) are actually obtai'zed. 
This will requlre that we give more of the content of the first 
source 
template in (38), and in particular the formula for "fire+atl', 
(39) 
may be considered a semi-full-form of 
[ 30 hn f ired+at line( of+stags)l 
in that the centre node has been expanded to its formula but the other 
4 
two nobs are left in "short fom", 
Each top-level case (or CAUSE) subfornula is extracted by the 
appropriate "case specialist1' which has access to the additional 
information grovided by the whole template in which that formula is 
embedded (and, as we shall see, to other templates as well). 
By 
way of illustration, we will look at the OBJE and GOAL extractions 
from the action formula in (39). 
(39) 
[John 
The dependent of the OBJE case in (39) shows that "firejat" 
line(+of+s tags) I 
prefers an ANImate object, but the formula is in a template whose 
object is - not animate (it is "line"), and so we have a failed prefer- 
ence, However, an animate object (stags) is available as a dependent 
of the surface object in the template, 
The extraction process takes 
the form of filling - a new copy of the source template, and imposing 
the available preferred animate object, to yield: 
C C John f ired+at s tags] 1 
~xtracting the GOAL, case is more complex. 
As we saw earlier, 
in the formula (10) for "break", the real dependent of a GOAL case is 
an assertion group, 
The appropriate full dependent to the left of 
GOAL in (39) is 
(*HUM SUBJ) (*AN1 OBJE) (STRIK $) 
where $ is indicates the position of "GOAL" in (39). 
This is an 
assertion group as it appears in a formul J. 
The extraction takes the 
form of rewriting this in tmplate form (from SOV to SVO form) and 
attempti% to fill in its nodes wit11 full formulas matching the 
preferences: 
so, on rewriting the above we get: 
(*HUM SUBJ) STRIK (*AN1 OBJE) 
in which an agent and object can be inserted fromithe whole template 
(39) so as to match the preferences expressed (if we incorporate 
the above 0BcJ;EFj extraction as well). Thus, we get an extracted 
"short form" template (converting STRIK to "strikes" for uniformity 
of expression, though it really remains as the primitive): 
C [John strikes stags1 3 
The extractions for INST and CAUSE require that we are able to 
look outside the source template for con£ irmation to other templates, 
.- 
Here, only INST receives any such confirmatim because there is no 
mention of any "bullet" or other missile that would confirm 
( (THLNG MOVE) CAUSE) ) . Since the' primitive dependent on INST is 
THING. the "INST specialist" produces a copy template whose primitive 
action is USB (if the dependent had been another type of entity, the 
rule could have been different) . The INST-tied template matched 
to "with a shotgun" in (39) is accessed by the INST specialist to 
provide the full object formula for USE yielding the extracted 
template shown in (39) as: 
(40) [[John. uses thing 11 
(=shot gun 
Let us look briefly at how extractions cope in a novel way with 
the standard ergatxve paradigm rehearsed at the beginniug of the 
It 
paper, and in particular with the interesting farms The window 
broket' and  h he hm-er broke the window", Initially these will 
receive a template match so as to yidd a representation even more 
superficial than that given in Simmons' system. Under extraction 
however, appropriate representations are obtained and cued by the fact that 
the superficial subject formula in the templates does not, in either 
case, satisfy the animate agency preference of the formula (10) 
for 
"break" which is the action node of both tkmplates, 
Thus  h he window broke" yields miitially: 
(41) C the+window broke 
Now, on extraction, ~~~'suEJ (agent) specialist sees not only that 
(a) the surfqce subject (window) does not specify satisfy the 
(*AN1 SUBJ) preference of (lo), but (b) the same surface subject 
does satlsfy the (*RQJYSOB OBJE) preference of (lo), which is filled 
- 
by only a dummy in the source template (41), Thus the "SUBJ 
specialist" produces a copy template with the agency preference 
satisfied: 
C C some+animate brbke U 33 
while "oBJE specialist" correspondingly produces : 
[:[: R broke window11 
and these are immediately conflated, On the general preference 
milks 1973a) principle of producing the fullest repzesentation 
possible, as the extraction: 
f [ some+animate broke windowl 3 
where the agent formula (now, of course, a tlue agent, not a 
surface subject) is merely (THIS *AN), an extractiqn from the 
"break" formula (10) : 
it has not been $oafinned by the Cext, and, 
replaced by a full formula froma source templake, as were the 
objec~ and agent of (40), 
Let us turn finally to the sentence matched initially as: 
(42) [hamer broke window1 
and again consider the extractions f rom4 (10) for "break" when at 
the action node of (421, We can produce the same SUBJ extraction 
as for (41) above, and we can again, using the "INST specialist", 
produce an extraction with USE as its main action prrmitive, as 
from (39), but in this example che dumles in the extracted template 
can hat be filled in from an INST-tied template, as in (41), and as 
would be the case with "John broke the window with a hammer", but 
from the surface subject of the source template ,itseif. Thus we 
obtain an extraction scheme for (42): 
(43) [hammer broke window-1- - 
SUB J R 
1 
C [ some+aniwte broke window] 2.- -, M" 
1 
INST 0 
0' 
CCsome+anirriate uses hammer] L -r" 
It is, of cours'e, essential here that the extractions are applied 
in a fixed order, so that the lNST extraction can make use of the 
SUBJ extraction and know that "hanrmer" is no,t avaixable to be the 
real agent of an extraction from (42). 
'Not all ergative verbs would receive identibal treatment, 
Thus, the relat'ion between: 
(44) John moved the stone 
and 
(45) The stone moved 
would not be the same as between the corresponding examples above for 
"break1', The action formula for "move" in (44) would have CAUSE as 
head, but the action (again "move") in (45) would be a different sense 
and so a diffezent formula, whose head would be MOVE, and which would 
not contain an instrument specification. So we would not expect any 
extraction: 
[ C some+animate moved stone1 I 
from (45), though we might well expect an extractiorl equivalent to (45) 
from the template for (44) 
There can be legitimate dispute about the limits to which case 
=tractions should go: so, for example, some writers (Parker-Rhodes 
1975) would consider that "John wrote a letter" should be an inference 
from 1 received a letter from John , and he describes a lattice 
scheme in which an AGENT case is generally and legitimately inferred 
from a SOURCE case, That could only be achieved with the "SOURCE 
specialist1' in the present system from a very full, speci~ic, 
formula for 'letterT (and extractions can come from nouns and not 
only from verbs) in which a petson) source was specified at the top 
level of the formula, 
Two points should be noticed, in conclusion, about this method of 
producing a qemantic structure appropriate to the ergative paradigm, 
First, the "case specialists" are not in general dependent upon the 
particular fomula in which they operate (e the word the fomula 
is for), nor upon the primitive that is the fonmlla head, 
Each 
specialist does, of course contain ranked side conditions but- th-y 
are not, except in special cases, dependent on the head of the 
formula, It is not the case that every line of the specialist for 
case X, 
say, is of the form "if the head of the source formula is Y 
do 2, else ,,. " This point will be important m the next section 
when we consider Charniak' s arguments concerning c as?. 
Secondly, this way of describing the ergatwe paradigm is 
naturally different from Fillmore's because, as has been noted, he is 
primarily concerned with restrictions of the generation (=productron !) 
of surface sentences by means of his ordered Subject Selcztiozl Rule: 
"I£ there is an agent it is the subject, else if there is an exper- 
iencer it is the sub,iect, else if there is an instrument .... and so 
on". This way of l~king at things assumes that John must in effect, 
already be marked as an agent, hammer as an Instqent or Object and 
so on, Simmons' analysis paradigms for the same example are, as we 
saw at the beginning, an analytic version of thzt rule, The differ- 
ence between those two approaches and the present one is twofold, 
First, that the present system is preferential in that John does not 
have to be.myrked as an agent: no confpsion would be caused here, for 
example, if he was used as an instrument, Secondly, and more import- 
antly, the construction here of the ergative representation follows not 
1) 
only from the application of the case specialists", but from the 
general rule of preference (Wilks 1973b) that as full (or maximally 
redundant) a representation should be produced as possible. TRis is 
required, in addition to the case specialists, to produce the extract- 
ion 
CCsome+animate broke window31 
from, the less r&undnmt ergative, (411, On this groudY I wuu1d 
argue that the phenomenon is dealt with here using a more general 
rule, and moreover, a geperal rule that drives this whole preference 
semantics system of analysis. 
ILL d recent paper, Charniak (t975) has argued that A1 systems 
that use case notation in their analysis of natural language are ndt 
really making use of case, and the present system is one of those he 
cr%ticises in this connection, Argunients along the same general 
lines are to be founa in Welin (1975). I think Ch-rniak's arguments 
are important and stimulating, though in sode ways misguided. They 
have the paradoxical sidk-effect of showing ;hat not even Fillmore 1s 
really making use of case. I shall briefly sur,marise seven aspects 
of ~harniak's complex argument, an$ make some reply, 
(i) The pa$ibi~n Argument, Charniak distinguishes between case 
notation and position notation (ibid. pp. '3~4). If we have an event 
of Jack opening the door with a key then, for Chamiak, a case form of 
that would be: 
(PREDICATE EV OPEN) (AGENT EV JACK) (OBJECT EV DOOR) (INSTRUMENT EV KEY) 
whereas OPEN(JACK, DOOR, KEY)' 
would be pure position notation. He argues that many A1 systems claim 
to be using case notation but in fact are using only position notbtion: 
dqing places arbitrarily to pass particular case arguments to a 
predicate, 
(ii) The evacuation argument. Charniak argues that the standard 
benefit of case --- the prdduction of, say, the ergative paradigm for 
11 open" from a case representation as in (i) above, together with a 
subject selection rule --- ean be obtained equally well with the 
position notation, (ibid. p. 17), Iq other words, the whole busin- 
ess can be evacuated of case altogether, with the case names remaim- 
11 
ing perhaps as mnemonic variable names" (ibid. p. 27). 
(iii)The linearity argument. 
Charniak argues that the e;xpression 
of meaning in terms of case is non-linear. Schematically, if it was 
linear it would look like: 
while the meaning of "see" would have EXPERIEHCER where the above 
has AGENT, However, in A1 systems it tends to be don-linear, 
like: 
MEANING (LOOK) =MEANING (OBSERVE ,AGENT) 
or, in other words, the meaning of MTANING(AGENT) cannot be computed 
independently of knowing that the agent is the agent of OBSERVE. 
(iv) Theproduction argument, Charniak argues that thenotion 
of case for Fillmore is es sentially connected with its productive 
generative role in controlling surface grammaticality, and that 
since AI systems are preoccupied with analysis, they are not making 
use of case, 
(v) The case-content argument, Charniak argues that we are 
never told what it is to be an agent as such, This is a subargument 
of (iii) above that one cannot compute MEANING(AGENT) independently, 
(vi) The surface analysis argument. Charniak demands that the 
"semantics-based systems" in A1 aJso do surface case analysis, of the 
type found in  illm more's papers. He argues that some such analyses, 
like the formula gi-ven earlier for "drink", qctually exclude the 
surface forms, but I showed earlier that this is not so. 
(vii) The case-inf erence argument. Charniak argues that 
11 
a system using case for semantic representation should provide case 
infe.zencesll. The meaning of case CASE would then be "the set of 
inferences me tan Wke &bout X, knowing only that X is in case 
In reply, I think Charniak misjudges where the heart of his argu- 
ment lies by giving undue prominence to rather bizarre arguments like 
(i) and (ii), whereas the serious ones are those like (iv) and (vi) 
that draw attention, as this paper has tried to do from a quite differ- 
I r 
ent point of view, to the need to relate the use of case in semantics- 
based understanding systems" to its original Fillmorean role as a 
classifier of superficial formsllike preposition and other case con- 
structions in English. I would paraphrase Charniak's Wrnent on this 
1 t 
point, perhdps unfairly, as claiming that case" takes its meaning from 
surface phenomena and therefore any attempt to locate it only in a deep 
t! 
semantics, wholly divorced from such phenomena, is to make case" mean- 
ingless. My answer t6 that, and it is a serious charge, is the 
presentation, here and elsewhere, of a system that - both parses surface 
English by means of case - and expresses its underlying semantics in the 
same notation, 
The third aspect of CharniakTs arguments, like (v) and (vii), is 
his concern with the precise content of the cases, This bothers every- 
one, including Fillmore, who had beer. unable to provide it, and so if 
the production of such definitions is made a necessary condition of 
using case then Fillaore, like everyone else, fails the test. 
Let Be, ip conclusion, reply to the arguments above in a little 
more detail. 
(i> is, I think, simply confused, The two (case and position) are 
simply equivalent forms of information, provided one knows that the 
"first argument is the agent" etc. etc. Charniak himself seems to see 
this when he admits (ibid. p, 4) that one could have case notation 
without case, and case without case notation, 
(ii) 
shows only the triviality that any cornputatidla1 system could 
have all its top level notions replaced by gensyms, like WQ5.567, and 
function in the same way, This would not however show that the 
notions being programmed were not essential to the meaningful function 
and interpretation of the system. In any system doing propositional 
logic, the notion AND can properly be replaced by a truth-table vector 
1000, but that does not show that the notion AND represents is 
vacuous, or a mere mnemonic convention. 
(iii) 
does not establish that systems must be wholly linear, in 
Charniak's sense. However, it would clearly be a defect in a system 
if, every time an inference about AGENT was made, the system had to 
look and see wl4at verb it was the agent of, or what the primitive 
action coding the verb was, Some examples of Schank's that Charniak 
discusses do show that this access to the head primitive is somerlmes 
made, and Charnzak then argues that the case is ipso facto dispensible, 
and the inferehces arabatter seen as inferences from that7-head Grim- 
itive aqtion, But, as T pointed out. when discussing extraction, the 
I I case specialistsi' in,the present system, at least, do not generally 
inake such reference) back co the acr;fun head, So, for example, the 
"GOAL-specialist" did not have to find out, before operating, what the 
action was that a given GOAL was a goal of. 
(iv) and (vi) These arguments are partly true but their points are 
aet by presenting a system, like the preference semantlics one, that 
ilses case both as a semantic representation and a parsing mechanism 
(the paraplates) , 
(v > 
It is true that no system, Fillmore's fncluded, has given 
precise definition of the cases beyond the most general indications, 
such as that agency is concerned with initiating force etc. This 
criticism is true far beyond case: it applies equally to notions of 
thinghood, causation and movement etc, It is just a fact that basic 
semantic notions arelvague,and perhaps necessarily so. 
It is certainly 
no ground for lament, and does not prevent us speaking precisely in 
everyday life. Provided, therefore, that a programed system can 
perfarm precisely using these vague notions, we can demand no more. 
The fallacy is to imagine that underneath the vague notions used in 
thought, speech and writing, there must lle precise criteria for their 
use. 
This is a persistent fallacy that has received much attention 
in Twentieth Century philosophy. 
In the present system, as in many others, specifications (select- 
ional or pteferefitial) are given of the agents of particular actiqns 
[human for "think? a$imate for "see", and: so on), One could argue 
that "agents as such" are, if anything, the union df all such agents, 
but that will not, and cannot, yield an intensional definition of the 
notion. Extractian operating on such specif icatidns (the "SUBJ- 
11 
specialist") yields Pnferences such as that some animate does so and 
s?"' but these do not meet Charniakt s utll~and in (vii) above. 
Iteis worth notifig-at this point that Charniak puts his demand 
(or test for "using zase") in such a way (in points (v) and (vii) 
above) that it is hard to see what could satisfy it: what result of 
computation could we conceivably expect as the value of 
MEANING(AGENT)? 
I would maintain that extractions, as described above, are most 
certainly "case in£ erences", but are not "the set of inferences 
one 
can make about X, 
knowing only that X is in case CAS~Iylbid. p. 19) 
because that set is not the sort of thing one wants to know in a 
language understanding sys tern. The "case specialists" in ogreration 
produced inferences taking information from the appropriate 
points in the representation; but from knowing merely that John is an 
agent nothing interesting follows or could follow! (And from that 
fact nothing follows to the effect that agency is vacuous, as Charniak 
seems to think), The most that could follow would be that John does 
somethfng or instigates sortne art. 
We -could hatdly infer at that point that John was animate, because 
that is presumably information generally attached to "John", and, in 
any case, some verbs (like "calculate1') may have a selection or prefer- 
ence restriction on their agent that is more general than animate, so 
that being animate could not follow from being an agent. 
To infer anything useful, as in the extractions earlier in the 
peaper, we have t~ look not just at what John is the agent of (which 
would make the whole thing circular for Charniak, by argument kl), 
but potentially at all the information available in the representation-. 
It is, perhaps, significant that agent is the case that makes 
Charniak's point best. The other extractions answer it better, for 
example in the way the I' INST-specialist" creates an extracted Pemplate 
with action USE; or the way the "GOAL-specialist" extracted an 
in£ erence "John strikes stags" in a manner independent of the fact 
that the source action was "fire at", for the "GOAL-specialist" did 
not consult the source verb name or its head primitive action CAUSE. 
Or, again, the way in which common-sense inference rules (Wllks 1973c, 
1975a, 197513, but not discussed in this paper) would operate on - any 
such extracted GOAL template and infer that the corresponding agent 
wanted the GOAL (whatever it was). And an inference rule like this 
latter can operate only if-it can locate the corresponding agent, 
Sob when we extracted the GOAL equivalqrit to "~ohn strikes stags", 
we tsould have (in order to operare the new inference rule) to be able 
to find that John was the agent of the extracted template if we whnted 
t~ in£ er further that John wanted to strike the stags. The agent 
(John) wiIl of course be the formula in the first position of the 
extracted template, and Charniak might then say that that does nok 
require agency but only access to a first template position. This 
would be a reversion to the bad position argument (i), and the 
answer is simply that the mechanism goes to the first positiou because 
that is where the agent has been put; in just the way that dollars 
are written before the decimal point and cents afterwards yet that 
fact does not allow us to dispense with the notions of dollars and 
cents in financial calculations. However, the important point here 
is that the "seeker of the agent" would seek it generally: it would 
not matter whaE the action (striking) in the extracted template was. 
11 
The real point behind Charniakls position" argument (i) is that no 
AI systems have such general routines, and hence an agent for one 
verb could be stored quite differently from that for another because 
there are no Such routines that would ever find this out! And that 
I believe is not the case, 
American Journal of Computational Linguis ties 
THIRD INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON 
PATTERN RECOGN ITIbON 
8-11 NOVEMBER 1976 
PROCEEDINGS: $18,75 FOR IEEE MEMBERS, $25 FOR OTHERS 
Pattern Recognition, P 0, Box 639 
Sllver Spring, Maryland 20901 
SELECTED CONTENTS 
SYNTACTIC METHODS IN PATTERN - ANALYSTS 
Chairmen R Narasimhan, rndla, and R S Ledley, USA 
INFERENCE FOR TRANSITION NETWORK GRAMMARS S M C~OU & K 5 FU 
a SUPERVISED LEARNING TECHNIQUE TO. IDENTIFY SHORT NATURAL 
LANGUAGE SENTENCES D Coulo~I and D Kayser 
GRAMMATICAL INFERENCE BASED ON PATTERN RECOGNITION G B Porter 
A PARSING ALGORITHM FOR IMPERFECT PATTERNS AND ITS APPLICATION 
R Mohr and J P. Haton 
SYNTACTIC FEATURE EXTRACTION FOR SHAPE RECOGNITION T Pavlidls 
INFERENCE OF REGULAR EXPRESSIONS L Miclet 
A MODEL FOR DEDUCING SEMAtdTI'C RULES OF INFERENCE USING A 
LAYERED ORGANIZATION FOR REPRESENTING EXPERIENTIAL INFORMA- 
TION P A Subrahmanvam 
OPTICAL CHARACT- RECOGNITION 
Chairman J C STmon, E'rance 
RECQGNITION OF HANDPRINTED CMARACTERS BY NDNLINEAR ELASTIC 
MATCHING Y Fujimoto, S Kadota, S Hayashi, M Yam~rnoto, 
'S Yajima, and M Yasuda 
THE RECOGNITION OF CHINESE CHAR.ACTERS (KANJI) USIdplG TIME 
VARIATiON OF PERIPHERAL BELT PATTERN T Fujita, M Nakanlshi, 
and K Miyata 
AN OPTICAL CHINESE CHARACTER READER K Sakal, S Hirai, T 
Kawada, and S. Arnano 
OPTIMAL INFORMATION ECONOMY IN THE MULTIFONT DCR rNPUT SYSTEM 
0 Albertsen, E Muenster, and P Ponsmng 
EXTRACTION OF THE MOST PROBABLE ENTRY FROM A DIRECTORY 
M Nadler 
A COMF9RISON OF CLASSIFICA.TION RESULT6 BY MAN AND BY MACHINE 
H Niem,nn 
IMPRINTED CHARACTER RECOGNITIOlj USING TEMPLATE MATCHING ON 
SPATIAL COMPLEX FREQUENCY PLANE--EXPECIALLY FOR KATAKANA 
LETTERS AND NUMERALS Tanaka and K, Ozawa 
LINGUISTIC.APPLICATIONS -- AND NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING 
Chalrmen T Kasvand, Canada, and N G Zagoruiko, USSR 
APPLICATION OF A WEB GRAMMAR MODEL TU AN EARTH RESOURCES 
SATELLITE PICTURE J Brayer and K FU 
NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING AS A PATTERN RECOGNITION PROBLEM 
J Maroy 
LEARNING STRUCTURED PATTERNS FROM ~XAMPLES F Hayes-Roth and 
J McDermott 
RECOGNITION OF YAND-DRAWN FLOWCHARTS C Suen and T Radhakrlshnan 
FOOT PRINTS: A REPRESENTATION FOR RESTRICTED MOTIBN IN OU'TDOOR 
SCENES B Bullock and S, Dudan1 
CHARACTEAISING SYLLABLES AS SEQUENCES OF MACHINE-GENERATED 
LABELED SEGMENTS OF CONNECTED SPEECH: A STUDY IN SYMBOLIC 
PATTERN LEARNING USING A CONJUNCTIVE FEATURE LEARNING AND 
CLAssIFIcnTroN SYSTEM F' Hayes-Roth and J. Burge 
STRUCTURAL ANAkYSIS OF HIERARCHICAL SYSTEMS E R Caianiell0 
and R Capoce~lli 
SPEECH RECOGNITION 
Chairmen K S Fu USA, and J I Nagumo, Japan 
AUTOMATIC EXTRACTION OF DISTINCTIVE FEATURES FROM CONTINUOUS 
SPEECH R De Mori and P Laface 
APPROXIMATION TECHNIQUES FOR THE LEARNING OF SEQUENTIAL SYMBOLIC 
PATTERNS M S FOX and F Hayes-Roth 
$PEECH UNDERSTANDING SYSTEM LITHAN AND SOME APPLICATIONS 
T Sakai and S Nakagawa 
WORD RECOGNITION IN A MULTI-TALKER ENVIRONMENT USING SYNTACTI c 
METHODS R L Kashyap and M C Mlttal 
PHONETIC STRING RETRIEVAL USING IMPERFECTLY LABELED PROTOTYPES 
S K Chang 
American Journal of Computational Linguistics 
Microfiche 56 : 74 
SOCIAL SCIENCE: 
A F C E T WORKSHOP 
Program ofa workshop held at Gif-sur-Yvette, 4 November 1976 
AUTOMATIC ,DOCUMENTATION AND URBANISM. ADEQUACY AND VALIDITY OF 
A DOCUMENTATION LANGUAGE FOR THE SATIN 1 SYSTEM 
J. C. Daumas and E Raby, Centre de Documentation sur 
ltUrbanisme, Paris 
INFORMATICS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE. TOWARD A CHANGE IN MODES OF 
THOUGHT 
A. Degenne, Laboratoire dtEconomle et de Sociologie du 
Travail, Aix-en-Provence 
ON SOME LIMITATIONS OF SYSTEMS FOP EL,ABORATE CONSULTATION OF 
DATA BANKS 
A Guenoche and J Vlrbel, Laboratoire d'Informatlque pour 
les Sciences de llHomrne, Marseille 
These papers are published In the Cahlers of an AFCET worklng 
group For infomation 
E Chouraqui & J: Vlrbel 
Laboratoire d' Informatlque pour les Sciences de 
L'Homme 
31, Chemin Joseph Alguier 
Marseille 9' 
American Journal of Computational Linguistics M~crofl che 56 75 
INTERNATIONAL MEETING 
PROGRAM 
LOUISA (LLING~l~~l~~LLY ORIENTED UNDERSTANDING AND INDEXING 
SYSTEM FOR ABSTRACTS) - A PROGRESS REPORT 
J Nogl (Belgim) 
SHAD (SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARY) 
M Spevack (West Germany) 
A HOMILY ON WULFSTAN'S ~OMILIES - CONCORDANCE MAKING AND 
PUBLISHXNG 
L A Cumings (Canada) 
AQDRESS 
B Quemada (France) 
Americatl Journal of Cornput at ional Linguistics Microfiche 56 76 
INFOR[.1ATION TECHIIIOLOGY SERIES 
SELECTED PAPERS FROM NATlONAL COMPUTER CONFERENCES AND 
USA - JAPAN COMPUTER CONFERENCES 
SERIES EDITOR Jack Sherman 
Lockheed Missiles and Space Company 
Sunnyvale, California 
PUBLISHER AF5PS Press 
210 Summit Avenue 
Montvale, New Jersey 07645 
VOLUME I DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS 
VOLUME EDITOR 
CONTENT 
PRICE 
Ben Shneiderman 
Department of Information Systems Management 
- 
university of Maryland 
Management and utilization perspectives 
Implementation and design of database systems 
Query languages 
Security, integrity, prlvacy, and concurrency 
Specification, simulation and translation 
16 papers 
Future toplcs mlcroprbcessors, computer networks, memory systems 
9 Washing 77 
September, 1976 
FI:D13lUL KESI,!lVE 1;ND131YTilKES MAJOR 13FTS PROJECT 
, ,,, ,,,, "-, - -- &----------.&- - - --.A--- 
T~Q PeJernl Rcscrvc System (the "Fed") is developing a p~lot projcct in co- 
oycratjon with the Wati,onal Autornatcd Clearing llouw Ashocidtion (NACIIA), 
to ilnplcmcnt clcstronir fu~und tr.lnsfers (EF'I') Srtwccn rcgiunal autom,itcd 
clcaringhouscs (AClI1s] 
l'hc project will i~lvotvc Fedcr,j 1 Rcr,orve districts 
for Boston, Ncw York, Cl~vela~~d, Atlanta, l)Allas, and Sdn I'r~ncisco, 'She 
systcrn will utilize the ~cderai Reserve s o~isting co~r~nunications network, 
'Ted #ire," and the PRCS Bulk Data c.ip.lbi1it.y for trnnsmitti~g funds bcthccn 
4CII: sites. IVhile the project 11~1s rcccit~d little public cxposure or m-tourlce- 
]dent outside of file trade press, its initj'll phnscs have bccn undcnvay since 
July, and it is sdlcdulcd for comi~pl.c-t im (incl udiog tr~nsmm ssion of 1 ivc 
pciyaicnt s) by Dcce~nber , 1976 
F{+rI++,>aZ add pr~oate reaclion. The l~rovisaon of I:FT zerviccs by the l'cJcral 
Rcsurvc has bccn the subject of COIILSICII~, from both tk Federal and private 
scctors . ELirlicr this year,  PI ~~~uti~ntirig gc~lcrally upon the provj si on of 
EFT $crviccs by thc QcJccr:ll Rcscrve, John Pgcr (then djrcctor of the Klli te 
ljousc Orficc -of 'I'd ccocl~~unicat ions Policy) said, 'I [t] llcrc do. not .ippc,ir to be 
,my cu~nonic or tccl;nological rc.rsons for thd Fcdcral Rcse~ve to involve itself 
.in thc actual provj si on of @k1g scrvic-cs . At:cu,t(li ngly, illl'a~~lt .lily c~;~pclii ng 
justification fir guvc~~luacnt entry into tlli's m I rkot, the p~ i vate ~~cctor should 
be left to provide clcotronic iullds tr.lnsfcr scrvices in ,in c~ivi~*o~!acnt that 
is free from govcmment ~per~it'ionil involvc.nc~it ." 'Illis vlc:tpoint llas been 
rcjxfbrc[.rl by co~luncnts from potential privat~ vcndors of 1:F'I' scrviccs :.hich 
113yc I,VCII riled llri tll tllc hTd1.i 411aal Cb;~o-~i ss j on @n I:F'T (?ICIJFIF) ;, s11q11 g~.(>~n).; Il,~ve 
cnllcd for prllrlic hc irin& on illc cx~h:~ilgc' pmj ect pri or to i ts l'ull i~ mi) tc~ncnt- 
dti on. 
In dn i ntc~vj cv .ippc.? 1 i og j n FiJk'S-L t17jcY ry T'~,~vr.l, 01'1' As~i 5i.lllt Ci11cra1 Co1111sel 
TI~VHMS ?fc~ii~~jllt \'lid i.lldt tlie. 1) 1-oj cct lu:s lL, Lcd i Re "2114 1 cpt I ti 011s tlc~ PI O~Y,IPII~ 
of an on-1 ii~o L,~~IJ~I I j ti, " JII~ CJI Led' i,t "illove v! i t lrout ~-(>g'~-rd to -the u1 shcs 
of tho #CI:FT, Congress, and the priv'ate scclor is to how tke 11lt i m~tc con~plcxion 
of tlfe nat i on1 s CFT systctlls should c~l)~~~dr. " 
I'hc ##il.Paa ,1150 rdj scs ~riv.2~~ CCII(;CTIIS, JUC i D LIE p~t ~illi~ 1 L~; tl~~t the 
I'cd, nr; n Fc'Jcsc~l ~OVC~.~~IIICII~ 'I~CIICY, ~,o~ld II~IVC to t-i ll~tllr. I ,I 1 .-I] 111 ,I of 111-i ~~te 
citizc~ls in a f~il 1 sqalc J.I.'~' system, 
?bs:-~l',gf a~t<v{ty, h'hi lc the red's proposed project lists as its obj ectire~ 
a campi lation of recomrncndations and possible pi-~blerns involved in EFT systems, 
a planning document for the project *clearly comtcmplates an expanded Federal 
government role; in partidular, the document s tetcs that the pi lot "should be 
conducted in the most realistic cn~itonm@nt possible. . . . [~]onsidcration 
should be given to the dcsirability of selecting participants that have a broad 
base of interregional activity, whizh wow2d facilitate e$pmion of the progrm 
to other r.c~gllijot ACH's in thrrlfut*rerlt (Enphnsis supplied). 
While the XCEFT has not taken a definitive stand on the project, it has bccn a 
topic of discussion at t'accat ~acctings of the Cortunission, 
SLXR'IIE HLVEKSES DECISION ON 5SX USAGE 
- - . --- ---- * - -. - 
The Senate rcccntly,'clpproved an amcntlmcnt to the 'l',~x Rcform Act of 1976, which 
would c~ imin.~tc somc of tlic rcstxicti?ns on %cia1 sceurity Sumbcr usilge 
C 
originally iraplcmcntcd by the Privacy Xct of 1974, Sp~.cifically, the nmclk~lmcnt 
r,ould allow state govct;incnts to demand disclosure of an intlividual's SSN, and 
to provide inforinition dn ;?n individual so idcntificd to the Parent Locator 
Sorvicc operated by the Pcdcral dcpar ~mcnt of Ilcal th, Ed:!ca t ion and \Selfare. 
The amcndmcnt was a co~i~promis~ bctgocn Scnatc rorccs uhiCh on one side wish to 
remove all rcstrictions on SSN usilgc, (~nd on the othcr wish to rostrict its 
rlsagc to lcgi t ilxrtc needs of Stdtc taxing iluthoritics. 
NBS 1:QKjIS 'I'XSK FORCE ON 1, I IRARY tWD IXl:0R!!lY~IoY NETWORK S l'!lxi) \KL)S 
- - T -3.) -- -7 -I--- - 9- --- 
'1%~-Hat i unal. Buccau of St :hldnrds has Iin~~ou~~ccd thc cs tall1 i sl~i~~t 11t of ;I t:lsk ro rce 
to "~ddrcss the problem uf dcvcloping high lcvcl ral~p~1tcr-to-tl~:~il~~1tcf prot.~coTs 
for the n:~t ioirni.de i ntcrch:lngc of infl~~-iaL~t ion. mong cxi sting :1!1d pl ,~:~ncd Li hrary 
and infor1fiat j on soi cncc nctvorks . It Iilsk for~c n~::hcrs rcre cl;o ;cn 11y the 
Sational Co~nmission an I.ibmrics and 1nCor;n:lt i tin Sci rnrc, bns4d on t heis !~pct-'t i sc 
in the area of computcr-to-compiitcr Jata i ntocchi~l~ge for such .kppI1i cnt:i ons, and 
their dnptcnce in Jcvcloping related st.~ndiird protocols Tor co~~~~nitcr'ho~wo~~ks. 
'r)zc tSc;Pr force; ~111 ch wi 11 rcccicc tccllnl: cwl stilqwrt Trli~lr I Ilc SBS THN ti 1 r~tu ror 
Computcr S1.i chccs ;id ~cch~iology , is cxpcc.tcd 1 o co~t~plutc j 1 s cl'fu rt s. in :~pprt)xL- 
rnntcly orrc year, n~ld providc- results to tl~c \ncr i can Society Tc~r. lhfur~nnt ion 
Sr i c~lco, t llc ,lls!ric.in 'S.lt ionnl St JRII:~ rcLs f 11s t i t II~ P ,in& 01 hbr rclnLcd nrg:lni tat i 011s. 
S1:rlhcr i liror:;~ it ion i.l.ry ?ic ollt .ti ncd t III-IIII~~~ ll~c \I:[ I):$. W.1 .II i net oh OrFi cc or by 
ctj111 xti tlg Mr. #John 1,. r,i ltlc i 11 Ki3Si :it [ 51)l). !]A1 w.57,?3. 
1!1c f'l~ti~t cs5 wi I1 1  kc In initial step tow IL.~ .II*~ ( 5s to EKCCII~ ive l3r:,f1cll in- 
folj,~.~t ig911 ~jw~,t~i:~s (Scc ;,'te:;h~~:yl.~~ Z?c~u~t, //76)* t11is 1.1w11th ~IICII CIIG (;cr~cr~~l 
ccou!it ing ol'ri qc i r~v~ritory of ovcr 1,000 \ysttLtl1s in 53 dj t'fcrcr~t I:xw.,utivc 
a3o11~ics is n:dc avai lz~blc an- line to slcrsbcrs, of Conkrcss through thc SCOIIPIO 
data l):~sc ~na intni ncd by thc I,i:)rary of Congrcss . 
1-n addition, SCORPIO is schcd~l~d to be augmented with a new daily index to 
the ~wpessio~1 Record. 
The file, which will be updated daily will be 
accessib3;e %y- 170 subject terms, and will contain complete data back to the 
beginning of the second session of the194th Congress (from 1/19/76). 
Available 
data will incbude summaries of floor actions, recorded votes, and the location 
of Ftcmber's s totcments made during debate. 
NEl+' 0'fP DIRECTOR ST4Ts INITIAL POSI'I'L UNS 
--A- -- 
In his first press conference, the ncw director of tKe White llousc Office of 
Tclecomllzunications Policy (OTP), Tlloinas J. Houser, revealed both similarities 
and dlffcrences of opinion with his prcdcccssor, John Rger. According to reports 
in the trade press, llouser jntends to continue Eger's adi*ocacy of deregulation 
in the te1eco~lunication.s industry, and szpport for private sector initiatives . 
In contrast to Cgcr, however, IIouser has taken a neutral stand on t11.e legis- 
lation now before Congress which would reassert.ATGTfs monopoly status in 
comri\unicntions (~us'rling ton Report, 7/76) 
l!ouser said that USP would colltil~uc to be irltercstcd in data cununui~ications, 
privacy and electronic funds transfer; he further announced that the Ofrice 
would develop by the end of the year a document which would tdke a long range 
look at telcco~~nunications, and would contain statements of principles by 0'1'P 
and private industry, respectively. While Houser indicated that OTP was not 
presently taking 
position on tile Federal Rcscrve Board's ACH exchange project 
(~IashingLon Report, this issue), he said that the O'I'P staff was preparing a 
position paper. 
The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) has publi shed Fcder.11 ~nfornatidn 
Processing Standards (FTPS) PUB 40, Guideline for Opt icaZ Ghvrmcter Recog- 
nitbn Forms (#, c~~close $1.80) . 
The National Scicncc I vtlndatibn (NSP) has relcdsed G~cmts utzd 4wgrds fur Fisea& 
Year 2975 (If, c?nclose $3.10). 
'She NSF Science Resources Scrvi ce has selcascd fJ11 ly,onczL PuL [ CL-.'S of fi&D R~.,O:~,~~:~JS: 
F~izd~ and FIaizpowsr in the Ilnited States, 2953 - 2976 (#, crlclosc $ .95). 
Jascph J. Ryan has been appointed as special assistant to thc director of the 
V!l~?tc I/v~lse Office of Tel~econ~municatioi~s Policy. 
NYF 1~s rq~ort cd tl~it 1:cdcral obl i gations for research and tlcvel ol.r:;lcnt arc $19.0 
13illicjn for fisc.31 ycar 1975, #~nd arc cxpcctcd to be $21.6 111 llion in 1376 
and $23.5 b~lljon in 1377. 
IZgai~ist the b ~ckgro~~nd crf c~~,~l)l i ng I csi sl ,it i on ~,~SSCC~ ~~1l-1 icr t11i s yrear 
Ihb~laalritlytun lpolit, 5/76) tllc Sciiat e l~i~ co~lf I ~rcd Dr. I!,. Guy ford S~CVCE ,as 
dj rector of the ncr~ IVhitc I!ousc Office of Sci cncc &lnd. 'rochnology Pblicy (05 lap) , 
HJlile Prcsj Jcut rordf s nomi nat ian 11~d c~pp.ircntly bccn dclliyp3 until the outqo~nk 
of -t%e Qcp1l'l2licnn dclcgate race was dl c'ir, confisalation was rc,ldily obtajncd in 
tllc Scfiate, Br. Rl1;3cll nccw, f~r~~(-l*ly 011 Dr. S~CVCX'S ~taff dt the X'itlo~aX 
Science ~oudation (NSF), is pnc of the first Wl'P staff members and will scrye 
as Dcputy Director for Security 6 International ~ffrirs. 
The topics of telccomntunieations and i~fornntiqn systcms have becn identified 
by tllo Fedcrrl g'roups pli~nning for OSTPJ as arcns of attention for the Off ice. 
Narc gcncglly, these ilrlviwry Croups identi ficd eight major issue arcas : organ- 
irat  on +f OSTP iwilf; oceans ; energy; food; nutriti~n; i ndustrial productivity; 
hc'zilth and safety; and basit rcscarch. Scveral of the spccific issues idrntificd 
by the groups relate direct'ly to cqrnllutcr technoloby; e.g 
HOW sl~ould OSTP 
idcnt ify and prornote j flcentives for accelerated application of new information 
handling technology in both government ahd private sectors? Arc thcre tile- 
communication; initiatives that should bc pursued by OSTP? IlVl~at slpuld be the 
ralative rdles of'0S1'P and the Office of Tclccommunicrtioi~s Policy in those arcas? 
(The full set of 65 OSTP issucb is available through the AFIPS lhshington Office.) 
Prcsidcnt Ford also has appointed Dr. Simon Ramo of TRW as chaiman of the ncw 
~rcsidant s Comittcc on Scicnce and Tcchnol~gy- (PCST) , a long 'range planning 
group created by the OSTP legjslatian. The Cdmmittcc is to survey the ovcrall 
Federal science, engineering and tcqhnolozy effort, submitq an intcrim rcport 
with rccomncndations one year aftcr its. inception and a final rcport with. 're- 
cdmnlunclations within tyo years. While Dr, Ram0 hap not )'ct outlincd his program, 
he is known to place n high priority on computer technology ~nd partjcularly. oi 
its appliortif~h to iiaprovo productivity. 
IC----- .- I-_ - -- r r-r r...Ci.. .--- - -- -. I .- - - I.. .'- - - r 11 r -. - r .-. ...-r.-l--.r.r rm. - 
AFiPS socictics 'hnvc i~cnnission t 0 usc 1ni1tcr.i ol in .the lPIIJS V.csh,iagtdn Report' 
fop flicir own l~bibIic:~ti~ns, CXCU~~ t11:lt V~IOPC 311 i~rt iclc title iippcnrs .with an 
11(*)11 cl car:~jlcc i.rist -f i rst bc oLti~i ~icd rroro 1 lm 
11% K:i~thi llyton [Iff icc. Doru 
lncnts i~ldir.ltd by 1 hci $yymbol { c v i :I I I to f hc AI*[,l)S 
kysla i ngtod Off icc. I\?~crc iricricc i s notcll, in.tko r11c~t:Ls pi~yal~lc to lll\l:II'S. I' 
. - - . -- - - --.- - - I -- I . - -----. - . 1 err. - . . . . - - . . - r . - - . I- - - - ..---5 - -3.- -- - 
tl Washington Report 
tf*******li***l******Y****.*****W** 
$1 11-kpr 3th0t-i uilidf~rn~~lron f%rj$x@;71~ Sbde1i~36 Inc Sufle 420 2100 1- Sireel N W "Wastvngton D C 20037 202 ~36 0590 
Vol. 11, No. 9 October, 1976 
~~OVS"E HOLDS HEARINGS ON ATE?' LEGISLATION 
Just prioz to adjournment of the 94th C~ngress , second session 
the Youse 
of Representaf~ves held preliminary heanngs on HR12323, (Vashin.qton 
R9ort I 7/76). 
The Hoyse Subcommittee on Commtlrticati~na had sought testl- 
mony on three primary topics : 
(1) the advantages aiid disadvantages of 
Federal Comrnunicatians Commisgion (FCC] policy allowlng ~o~npetition in the 
teletommunications industry, (2) the idcntifiaation of unresolved issues 
relating to competition, 2nd (3) identification of further information 
necessary prior to a subcommittee decision 
AT&T Teseimony. 
ATGT  hairm man John D. deButts testified that the proposed 
legislation would not affect the profitabiility of his company, since ATGT 
would in any case petition the FCC for rates which would allow sufficient 
earnings to attract capital. DeButts re~terated ATU s prlmary argument, 
however that such competition would likely shCf* cost burdens from business 
to resiaential users of the system. D-e.Bvtdt;s mainta,inecl under questioning 
that competition permitted by the FCC had required ATET to adapt its design 
standards and operating methods to competitive equ;ipment, had complicated 
network planning, and had divided markGts which copld more economically be 
handled (by virtue of economies of scale) by a single system. 
Response from compet;t<ve vendors. Representatives of nunerous companies 
competitive with ATGT in both voice and data coiiununications testified during 
the second day of hearings. Ph~1i.p Wittaker of Satellit0 Business Systcms 
(SBS) argued that ATgT was blrt one of many companies 
ifl carnmand of the 
technology and that fu~ther national economic development required the 
resources and expertise oi, these conlpanies in a competitive environment, in 
order to meet the needs of specialized users. i-Ie maintained ;that SBS :gill 
make available services not now offered nr proposed by other carriers and 
which will be significantly advantagous to users. Telenet Vice President 
Philip Walker submitted that if the AT$T legislation were effective in 1974, 
Telenet's applications to provide packet switching services [which are not 
provide-d by AT4T) would never have been approved. Walker proposed that ATET 
be perfiltted to provide competitive services only through subsidiary compa- 
nies Peter McCloskey of the Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers 
Association (CBEMA] testified in favor of competition in the manufacture of 
terminal equipment, arguing that the market itself provides the mechanism 
necessary to allow users a choice of equipment at the lowest possible prices 
FCC Chaz. WiZey. Richard Wiley opened by describing exrsting exceptions 
to monopolistic netwo'rk control, including independent telephone compahics 
and iddependent ly produced equipment used by t el cyhone companies . 
Wi 1 cy also 
stated that the proposed legislation would jeopardize significant new 
developments such as data comnunications and EFT systems, and would allow 
concentrated control over this "increasin~ly vital and sensitive information 
system." The FCC had in May of this year submitted written comments oppos 
ing the proposed legislation, on the grounds that it would inhibit the 
development af consumer alternatfues, and allow higher casts; the FCC also 
maintained that ATBT would be allowed to collect and dispense "substantial 
subsidies without effective Federal oversight . 
Speakrng for the Justice Department, Assistant Attorney General Baker prafqed 
FCC regulation for allowing competition where possible in the common carriar 
field Baker stated that competition brought substantial benefits, and ursed 
the Congress to pursue such colnpetitive solutions. Baker maintained that 
existing data to subs.tantiat6 AT(Tfs claims of economy of scale was in~onclu- 
sive; he indicated that local message switching may involve economies of sgalc, 
but that the manufhcture of terminal equipment probably did not. 
SENATE SCIENCE REID TECHNqLbGY COE1MITl'EE AE~P@WIZATIQN 
The Scnate in recent bearlngs considered three alternative plans to re- 
structure its complex syqtom of 174 subco~fttees which relate to science and 
technology. The Temporary Selecr committee to Study the senate Conmittee 
System is- focusing on this ated by considering primarily three alternative 
plans which, if adopted. wolrld bd subject to furyeher nodif'cation. The first 
plan would retain the existing committee organization, but would significantly 
reduce. the number of committee members and reorganize committee jurisdic~ions . 
This plan inuolves se~eral~diffeerent options, one of which would create a 
Committee on Science and Technology which woula have jurisdiction over science, 
engineering and technolog (including aeronautics and space) its oversight 
jurisdiction would enconpars the new White house Office of Sciettce and Tech- 
nolagy Policy, the Naeional Bureau of Standards, the National Science Foundatipg r 
and the Congressional Office d Technology Ass~ssmeM. The second plan would 
consolidate the existing thirtr -one committees into twelve standing committees, 
with a possible option to again create a Cornif tee on Science and Technology.. 
The third plan would create five broad co~1ttees on goyernnient humah, natural 
and financial resources, apd on defense and for~ign policy, each of which would 
have responsibilities for relcv~t agcqcies in the Executive Branch. 
The Senate is expected to deal with these proposals when the 95th Congress 
convenes next year. 
NSF DEADLINE FOR COMPU'IER S.IENCE OR ENGINEERING P,ROPI)SALS 
National Science Foundat ion (NSF) Division of Mathematical and Computer Sciences 
has announced a November 1 ; 1916 dead,line for cornputex science or computer 
engineering proposals for Fiscal Year 1977 Funding. Prospective grantees can 
request NSF document 76-20 (1) which describes current programs in the Computer 
Soiences Section (CSS) : Theoretical Computer ecience (Dr. W. Richard ~drion), 
Software Systems Science [Dr. Thomas Keenan), Software Engineering (Dr. Bruce 
Barnes), Intelligent Systems (Dr. Sally ~cdelbww), Cbrngute~ Sysf ems Design 
(Dr. John Lehmann) and Special Pro j ects (DI . Fred Weingarten) . 
~ccording to Dr. Kent Curtls, head of CSS, a new guide for preparation of 
proposals ~3.11 be released shortly. Proposals are to contain (1) a statement 
of intended research, (2) a statemenr: of related research in progress or. 
completed, (3) a budget, (4) vitae on principal investigators and, optionally, 
(5) an appendix describing relevanx u~yublishe'd li teratu~e . 
CSS is receiving proposals in all programs mentioned above,, and expects a six 
month turnaround in processing proposa21s. Applicants may contact NSF directly 
at (202) 632-7346 or obtain assistance through the. AFIPS Washington Office 
GAO REPORTS ON FEDERAL MODELING 
The General Accounting 0fEic.e (GAO') has released a report- on "Ways to Improve 
&mug-nt of Federally kcnded ~o@uterized ~odeZsI~ (#- enc luse $1.00) . 
The 
report concludes that appropriate standards from* the Depaqtment of Commerce, 
and guidance from the General Services Administration should be provided f~r 
improving management of such models. GAO developed and proposed a phased 
approach fo'r planning, managing and controlling the development of computerized 
models which consists of five phases: problem definitibn, preliminary design, 
detaiied design, evaluati~n, and maintenance. According to GAO,, this approach 
will reduce costs overruns and result in models better suited to the needs for, 
which' they are designed. 
OBM PROPOSED STANDWD COMPUTER SCrENCE C JASSIFICATIONS - 
The White Hpuse Office of Management and Bud et (0f1l33 recently released a 
draft Statrdard Occupationat CZassif<~atiofi f  SO^ lkmual wTiich categorizes 
the occupationa~ structure of the U. S. work force. It is anticipated that 
the Manual waald be used by the Department of Labor arrd other Federal agencies 
for categorizing manpower data collected or required by the Federal government. 
 the^ SOC is intended to provide a ~nechwism for cross referencing and 
aggregating occupation-rel'ated data collected for social, economic and 
statistical reporting programs. 
According to OMB, a standard classification "has become an urgent need in 
order to maximize the utility of eederal), s-tatistics . . . 
The classification 
should . . . facilitate long-range analyses, should reflect the structure of 
the world of kork as realistically as possible and should provide the rnecl~anism 
by which data from disparate sources can be linked." 
The Standard Occupational 
Classification was developed under an interagency cowittee established by OblB. 
Although no direct contact was made with AFIPS, OMB stated that professional 
or2anizgtisns and other interested parties were provided an opportunity to 
comment on the classification 
me Manual isestructured heirarchically and,.for example, proposes the 
fellowing categories for "computer scientists : " 
NATURAL SCIENTISTS AND MTHEblA'CICIANS 
181 Computer Scientists 
1812 Coquter Systems Anal yszs 
Applications engineer 
Engineering analyst 
Programer engineering and scientific 
Systcms engineer 
Cb@pUier analp t 
Cornput ifig-sys tems analyst 
Computer-systems planning 
Syst ws ancflyst, data processing 
Systems andryst, computer sys tems 
Systems engineer- 189,739 
1819 Computer Scientists, Not Elsewhere Classified 
Systems engiheen electronic data proc 
Systems analyst 6usiness elect~onic d 
Computer application,engineer 
~igital-co*hputer programmer 
Electronic data programmer 
!4ethods analyst, computer 
Software spedalist 
Possible AFIPS comment is presently being explored by the Washington Office. 
NEWS BRIEFS 
L 
The National Bureau- bf Standards @BS) hsld a' September 21 and 22 workshop 
on its proposed data encryption standard, to address the "strength" of 
the algorithm, formal proofs of security, effectiveness of the standard 
in di ffcrcnt, modes, and keying uariqble con%zol and distribution. 
The FCC has proposed a "network access charge" for connection ~f borh coflhun 
carrier and privately purchased terminal device's. 
The U. S. Cornptroiler General has issued a bookLet entitled %!cquiring Fin- 
ammiat Manageme~t. d Other Informtion Sys tams " which. synthes i zes GAO 
guidelines for the mquisition of sucFt systems (I); the puhlica~ion dis- 
cusses systems planning, contracting, design, devel~pmcnt , tcstmg, 
implcmcritation and operation. 
The Commerce Department is considering a new procedure in expost control of 
computer hardware which would a1 low manvfacturers to certify the pcr- 
furlfiance levels of their own equipme~t; 
Robert Ross has been appointed general counsel 3f the White house Office of 
Tel dcommunications Policy. 
According to the trade press; AT6T and CBEMA have held discussions on a 
possible interconnection standard for data communications equipment. 
The U. S. Privacy Proteczion Stady Cpmmission held an Ocmber 13-15 workshop 
on state privacy ahd fair information practices acts in St. Paul,, 
Minnesota. 
The Privacy Protection Study Commission solicited private sector organ- 
izations to submit infornigtion on employment and personnel record- 
keeping practices by October 15. 
AFIPS IN WASIIING'TON 
------ ------ 
AFIPS ORGA,WIZES FCC PLI\NNING CONFERENCE - 
PTans have now been finalized for APIPS to provide a planning conference 
on conlputer c~rrlmunica tions to the Fcderal C.ommunicat ions Commiss lo n. A 
copy of the press rele~se for the Conference is appended to this !issue of 
the AFIPS Vash<ng.t;on Report. 
AFIPS ATTENDS 'SCILNUE COURT C0ljLOQUIUM 
------ -- -------LC--------- -,- 
In September the dircctor of the AFIPS Washingloo Office attcndcd a colloquium 
On the proposed ''Science Court1' sponsored by the Dwartment of Commerce, 
National Science Foundation, and A~ncrican Associatluh for the Advancement~of 
Science. 'The Science Courc has been prol~oscd by Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz, a 
rncmbcr of the Prcsidcl~tial Adviso~~ Group orf Anticipated Adva~~ces in Science 
and Technology, as a means of adjutlicatir~g sclent;lflc disputes which are part 
of major public polity decisions. 'The proposud Cmu~t w~uld deal only with 
scientific issuesm leaving policy matters for the rlormal decisionlnaking 
gfoups within the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the Federal 
nover~iment. While bt'ilizing an advovsary hearing, the Scicnce Court would 
attealpt to deliver definitive, crcdtble rulings on scientific issuos, 01- at 
least to identify the current state of scientific koowlcdge. 
The Colloquium he~ird divergent views on tbc rncrlts of proceeding with an 
cxpcrj~ncntal s~ience court and while t1lcl.e rrns by TIO Illcans a conscrrsus, the 
prcwiling opinion appearbcd to bc supyortivc ofi going forward with such an 
cxl~crimcnt.. ..In part icul~, the col loclfii-urn heard favornblc vi cws from both 
Prcsidcntial, Sciurlco Adviser G~~yforJ Steves JI:~ Si~ct*e~;~ry of COI~I~C~CC El 1 iot 
Richardsbn. 
CIVl I, SIJIIYlCE .:Ob!llU'L%R SCl IJN'I'I S'T. OC(:IJIJA'l'lONAI, S'l'lZNl)ARD 
" -- ----*--- *-- - - - - ---- - - -*- - *---- - - - -- ---- - . -. - - - - - - -- 
The Exccut.ive Conul~i t tcc of the Assoc j zit ion 
Toy Con~put cr Mtl(*ll i ~~cry (ACM) 
rccc~ltly prouidcd comlncrlts to the U. S. Ci vi 1 Scrv.~ ce C~JII~~II ss lor1 on the pro- 
posed Fcdcral occul~ational standard for a "Co1l1p11tcr Sc~oncc So.ricsM (iihhihg~on 
Ilsport, 8/76) Do-Lh A~hl prcsidcnt Ilcrb Crosch and vice president Dan McCrnckcn 
sent letters- to the Conn~ission; McCra~kcn su~nm:lrizcd the Executive Coln~nittce 
comn\ent as follows i" 
de l>olieve that the staddnrd is weak in 1-cqui si ng 18 holirs of 
mathematics courses COF a11 computer scj oncj sts , wi tnout 
differentiating betwccn coursrs that arc of rclevcnce to 
conlputer sczcnce, ~I'L~I those of e:;sc~lt ial ly no valuc cxccpt 
for those faw r!l~o spljcializc in n~anc~~cal c~tlalysis. It would 
be possrble to meet the cducatlonnl rcquircmcnts of this 
standard with a selection of courscs providing a backgrqund 
i lappropriate fot most ,vi'ork with coraputcrs, even work in 
computer scieficc. Ftirther , there is ~nucll pro fcss ional work 
with con~putcrs that docs not, l*cqblrc cvcn this much ~niltlrcmatics 
Finally, ye bclicve tl;at'the field of co~~~putil~g. is still so 
new and so ~nuch in flux that ally stn~ulnrd in this iLrca should 
be provi,si611al ;jnd should l~c fl.cq~rcnt ly fcv I ysd, 
PENDER - McCARTER, LINDA MARTEN JOIN**AFIPS WASHINGTONxSTAFF 
-- --- 
Mr. ri~nder McCarter recerltly joined as research associate, and Ms Linda 
Martin as secretary. the staff of the AFIPS Wnshin@bn Office. 
Mr. McCaster comes to AFIPS from his position as edltor of: EFTS--Idustry 
Report; Peripherals weekly; aid Software Hgest ; a1 l pub1 ications of EDP 
News Services of Washington. He had earlier undertal sn significant 
research for AFTPS in connection with the AFIPS Stt;dy on Professionu~ism, 
and the AFIPS roundtabl on t'Professionali.m in the Camputer Fieldtr held 
in 1970. McCa~ter's journdli&tic insight intta Wh-shina ton and related 
information processing issues is expected to bs a strang asset to AFrPS in 
\Vashington; he will be responsible for the AFIPS Washlngton Report as well 
as rcscarch cfforts underzakeq through the AFTPS Washlngton Office. 
Ms. Martin also brings with her in additio'll to t.he sY ills required for the 
numerous support functions within the Vashington Of'fice, both exposure and 
training in the inforn~ation processing field by virtue of her previous 
positionwithsperry Univac in Washingtan, D. C: A graduate o'f C~shing Jr. 
C~llege, she ha3 had significant Washington e~e~ience through pasirions ill 
both the Federal Government and a nonprofgt association. Ys. Mart'in re- 
places Marcie Terrones, who left AFIPS ih September. 
We offer Pend~r .and Linda our best wishes in their work with AFIPS, and 
welcome them to the staff: 
to use material 'in the A~IPS' ~ashCngton Report 
that where an article title appears with an 
l1(:)" clcaranco must first be obtained from the AFIPS Washington Office 
Docu 
are available on rcqucst to the AFIPZ 
noted, make checks payable to "ARIPS.ll 
II 

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