Sheldon Klein

Professor of Computer Science

Professor of Linguistics

Computer Sciences Department                        Linguistics Department

University of Wisconsin                                     University of Wisconsin
1210 W. Dayton St.                                          Madison, WI 53706
Madison, WI 53706-1685
                                              (emeritus, 2003)

telephone: (608) 262-1204

fax: (608) 262-9777
email: sklein@cs.wisc.edu

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1963

Interests:
Meta-linguistic pragmatics of artificial intelligence and grammars.
Archaeology of knowledge structures,
Testing models of language interaction, change and transmission in 3d-virtual world simulations.

Research Summary

2. The first involves a meta-linguistic, natural language processing system that can be configured to model a variety of theoretical linguistic models. It's semantic structures are in the form of a relational calculus that can be expressed in implicit semantic networks. The basic semantic units are objects and relations. Objects may be atoms or classes, or contain relational structures. Relations may be logical operators. All units in the system are associated with Boolean feature vectors. During the course of generation or recognition, inheritance of features is bi-directional. Because relations can be defined as logical operators, script-like, world knowledge rules can be encoded in the same notation used to map semantic structures to syntactic units. Semantic/syntactic production rules are represented as data, and the same rules can be used for both generation and recognition. The system can contain more than one grammar, thereby allowing it to be configured either as a machine translation system, or as a natural language interface to application command languages.

3. The combinatoric problems associated with unrestricted models of human language processing suggest that real-world knowledge systems may have evolved in forms that make combinatoric processing problems linear. I am currently investigating the role of Boolean groups and analogy in complex behavioral systems, including the representation of categorial grammars. Grammars in this notation can readily be implemented in connectionist models, and may provide a transparent means of linking language structure to neural net theory. My research effort has occasionally involved analysis of archaeological materials as early as the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition.
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A recent paper:
Klein, S.  2002.  “The Analogical Foundations of Creativity in Language, Culture & the Arts:
the Upper Paleolithic to 2100CE.”   In Language, Vision & Music, edited by Paul McKevitt,
Conn Mulvihill & Sen O' Nuallin, Amsterdam: John Benjamin, pp. 347-371.
Revised & expanded version of Klein (1999).

Klein, S. 1999.  "The Analogical Foundations of Creativity in Language, Culture & the Arts:  the Upper Paleolithic to 2100CE,"Proceedings of The Eighth International Workship on the Cognitive Science of Natural Language Processing (CSNLP-8).  Theme: Language, Vision & Music, 9th-11th August, 1999, edited by Paul McKevitt, Conn Mulvihill, Sen O' Nuallin & Colm O'Riordan, pp. 20-32, Information Technology Centre, National University of Ireland, Galway.  [Invited Plenary Paper]

also,
Klein, S.  2002.  "Tying Loose Ends in Kawaiisu Phonology,"  Survey Report #12: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages,  June 8-9, 2002.   Edited by  Lisa Conathan & Teresa McFarland, Linguistics Dept., UC-Berkeley.
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Selected Sample Publications

Klein, S. & R. F. Simmons. 1963. A Computational Approach to Grammatical Coding of English Words.
Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, 10: 334-347.

Klein, S. & R. F. Simmons. 1963. Syntactic Dependence and the Computer Generation of Coherent Discourse. Mechanical Translation and Computational Linguistics, 7: 50-61

Klein, S. 1965. Automatic Paraphrasing in Essay Format.
Mechanical Translation and Computational Linguistics 8: 68-83.

Klein, S. 1965. Control of Style with a Generative Grammar.
Language, 41:619-631.
[Also, in German translation as, Stilkontrolle mit einer generative Grammatik.  Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven. Edited by Jens Ihwe,   Vol. 1, pp. 234-252,  Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1971.]

Klein, S., S. L. Lieman, & G. E. Lindstrom. 1968. DISEMINER: A Distributional-Semantics Inference Maker.
Journal of Computer Studies in the Humanities and Verbal Behavior 1: 10-20.

Klein, S. 1972. Nekotorye komponenty programmy dinamicheskogo modelirovannija istoricheskix ismenij v jazyke. Novoe v lingvistke, vypuck vi, jazykovye kontakty. Pod. red. B. Ju. Rozencvejga, Moscow: isdatel'cstvo "Progress." pp. 141-154, [Russian translation of 'Some Components of a Program for Dynamic Modelling of Historical Change in Language,' Preprints of Invited Papers for the 1965 International Conference on Computational Linguistics, May 19-21, New York,. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics]

Klein, S. 1966. Historical Change in Language using Monte Carlo Techniques.
Mechanical Translation and Computational Linguistics 9:67-82.

Klein, S. 1974. Computer Simulation of Language Contact Models, in Toward Tomorrows Linguistics.
Edited by R. Shuy & C-J. Bailey, Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, pp 276-90.

Klein, S.,  W. Fabens,  R. Herriot,  W.  Katke,  M. A. Kuppin  &  A. Towster.  1968.  The AUTOLING System,
UWCS  Tech Report  No. 43, 85 pages.

Klein, S. & M. A. Kuppin. 1970. An Interactive, Heuristic Program for Learning Transformational Grammars.
Computer Studies in the Humanities & Verbal Behavior 3: 144-162.

Klein, S.  1973.  Automatic Inference of Semantic DeepStructure Rules in Generative Grammars.
UWCS Tech. Report  No. 180.   Also in Computational and Mathematical Linguistics: Proceedings of the 1973 International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Pisa.  Edited by A. Zampolli,  Florence: Olschki,  1977.

Klein, S.  1973.  Automatic Inference of Semantic DeepStructure Rules in Generative Grammars.
UWCS Tech. Report  No. 180.   Also in  Computational and Mathematical Linguistics: Proceedings of the 1973 International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Pisa.  Edited by A. Zampolli,  Florence: Olschki,  1977.

Klein, S.  1976.  FORWARD:  The History of MESSY.  In The Meta-symbolic Simulation System User Manual,
 M. A. Appelbaum. UWCS Tech. Report No. 272,169 pages.

Klein, S., J.F. Aeschlimann,  D. F. Balsiger,  S. L. Converse,  C. Court,  M. Foster,  R. Lao,  J. D. Oakely  &  J. D. Smith.  1973.
AUTOMATIC NOVEL WRITING,  UWCS Tech Report No. 186,109 pages..
An abridged version also appears in,
Text Processing/Textverarbeitung.  Edited by W. Burghardt & K. Hölker,  pp. 338-412,
Berlin & New York:  Walter de Gruyter,  1979.

Klein, S., Aeschliman, Applebaum, Balsisger, Curtis, Foster, Kalish, Kamin, Lee & Price 1976. Simulation d'hypothèses émisés par Propp et Lévi-Strauss en utilisant un système de simulation meta-symbolique. Informatique et Sciences Humaines, No. 28, pp. 63-133, Mars. [A revised and expanded French translation of 'Modelling Propp and Lévi-Strauss in a Meta-symbolic Simulation System.' in Patterns in Oral Literature, edited by H. Jason & D. Segal, World Anthropology Series, The Hague: Mouton, 1977, with a new Lévi-Strauss model, a revised Propp model, and a different set of computer generated folktales.]

Klein, S. 1983. Analogy and Mysticism and the Structure of Culture.  Current Anthropology  24:151-180.

Klein S. 1988. Narrative Style in Variants of a Kawaiisu Myth Text, in In Honor of Mary Haas:  From the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics.  Edited by William Shipley,  pp. 467-48l,  New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Klein S. 1988. Reply to S.D. Siemens' critique of S. Klein's 'Analogy and Mysticism and the Structure of Culture (Klein 1983)'. Current Anthropology 29:478-483.

Klein, S. 1990. Human cognitive changes at the middle to upper Paleolithic transition: The evidence of Boker Tachtit, in The Emergence of Modern Humans: An Archaeological Perspective, P. Mellars, ed., pp. 499-516, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Klein, S. 1991. The invention of computationally plausible knowledge systems in the upper Paleolithic,
in The Origins of Human Behaviour, R. Foley, ed., pp. 67-81, Unwin Hyman, London.

Klein, S. 1996. Grammars, the I Ching and Levi-Strauss: More on Siemens' `Three Formal Theories of Cultural Analogy', Journal of Quantitative Anthropology 6: 263-271.

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