Research by Graeme Hirst and his students

Our research in computational linguistics emphasizes issues in lexical semantics, pragmatics, and the social use of language that arise when the methods of computational linguistics are applied to real-world language and real-world problems. The ultimate goal of our research is the development of better computational models of language for use in human--computer interaction and in applications such as information retrieval, text analysis, and machine translation. Two applications that have been especially important in our work are intelligent correction of real-word spelling errors and intelligent linguistic assistance to disabled users.

Several themes underlie the approaches that we take. First, we are concerned with fine-grained nuances of language, as it is really used in the world. Second, there is an emphasis on problems of representation of linguistic and semantic knowledge. Third, the approaches taken are inherently interdisciplinary; the work draws on research in psycholinguistics, philosophy, theoretical linguistics, and sociology. This orientation is particularly suited for research in such applications as machine translation and, more generally, in generation systems in which precision in language is important; in advice-giving systems; in processing long documents for conceptual retrieval; in intelligent tools for writers; and in knowledge acquisition by reading.

Some current projects

Some past projects