James Rogers

Associate Professor
Computer Science Department
Earlham College

Campus Address:

Computer Science Department
Drawer 98
Earlham College
Richmond, IN 47374, USA
(765)983-1671 Fax:(765)983-1497

Home Address:

625 SW 20th St.
Richmond, IN 47374
(765)939-7340

Class Pages

Current Schedule

Some of the other things I have done recently:

Characterizing Human Language by Structural Complexity (CHLaSC), Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin. Formal Issues in the Design and Interpretation of Artificial Grammar Learning Experiments Slides (186KB)
European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information ESSLLI 2007 http://www.cs.tcd.ie/esslli2007 6–17 August, 2007 in Dublin, Ireland
- at which I taught a course Formal Description of Syntax Reader(529KB) Slides(621KB)
- and jointly organized a workshop Model-Theoretic Syntax at 10 (MTS@10)
Tenth Meeting on Mathematics of Language (UCLA)
- and co-authored another with Stephan Kepser (U. Tuebingen, DE) The Equivalence of Tree Adjoining Grammars and Monadic Linear Context-Free Tree Grammars
Recursion in Human Languages Conference, Illinois State University, at which I presented a paper, co-authored with Marc Hauser (Harvard U., USA), Potential Distinguishing Characteristics of Human Aural Pattern Recognition Slides (137KB)
2005-2006 Academic Year-Sabbatical. Jeanne Rosselet Fellow Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
The International PhD School in Formal Languages and Applications at Rovira i Virgili University, Taragona, Spain, in which I taught an annual one-week module on Tree-Adjoining Grammars (TAG) for several years
MoL, The Association for Mathematics of Language of which I'm the past President. (Go figure.)

Research

My research focuses on the logical foundations of grammar formalisms. Currently I am most actively involved in two areas:

model-theoretic approaches to theories of syntax and
descriptive characterizations of language-theoretic complexity classes.

I am also pursuing application of results in these areas to the problem of developing and maintaining large grammars.

For a slightly more detailed research abstract see (postscript) (pdf)

My doctoral studies were carried out in the Computer and Information Sciences Department at the University Delaware under K. Vijay-Shanker. Copies of my dissertation Studies in the Logic of Trees with Applications to Grammar Formalisms are available from the Univ. of Delaware as Technical Report No. 95-04, email requests to dasaro@cis.udel.edu This is not yet available electronically, although an abstract is available here.

The following preprints and drafts are available here. Comments are welcome. I'm interested in who else is interested in this stuff; drop me a note if you pick one of these up.

Slides from some recent talks
- Characterizing Human Language by Structural Complexity (CHLaSC), Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin. Formal Issues in the Design and Interpretation of Artificial Grammar Learning Experiments Slides (186KB)
- Extended reader for ESSLLI07 Course: Formal Description of Syntax (529KB)
- Slides for same: (621KB)
- same again, one-up (hendrik.pdf) (725KB)
- Recursion in Human Languages, Illinois State University 27–29April'07 (360KB) (137KB)
- U. Penn, 8Feb'06 (ps, 1.2MB) (pdf, 450KB)
- U. Tuebingen, 12April'06 (ps, 910KB) (pdf, 585KB)
Chapter in collected papers from the RecHul meeting (see above). To Appear. The Use of Formal Language Theory in Studies of Artificial Language Learning: a proposal for distinguishing the differences between human and nonhuman animal learners with Marc D. Hauser, Harvard. (pdf)
A couple of recent papers looking at applications of the higher-level grammars to issues in natural language syntax:
- On Scrambling, Another Perspective (gzipped postscript, 65K) (pdf, 113K)
  Seventh Workshop on Tree-Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms (TAG+7), Vancouver, 2004.
- Wrapping of Trees. (gzipped postscript, 48K) (pdf, 89K)
  48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Barcelona, 2004.
wMSO Theories as Grammar Formalisms (gzipped postscript, 140K) (pdf, 378K)
Theoretical Computer Science, v 293, n 2, pp 291-320, 2003.
One More Perspective on Semantic Relations in TAG (gzipped postscript, 72K) (pdf, 46K)
Presented at the Sixth International Workshop on Tree-Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms (TAG+6), Venice, 2002.
Syntactic Structures as Multi-Dimensional Trees. (gzipped postscript, 180K) (pdf, 740K) (abstract) This surveys the work below along with some more recent work. A preliminary version was presented at the ESSLLI'00 workshop on trees. This version appears in Research on Language and Computation, v 1, n 3-4, pp 265-305, 2003.
Generalized Tree-Adjoining Grammar. (gzipped postscript, 131K) (pdf, 268K) (abstract) A paper presented at the Sixth Meeting on Mathematics of Language, 1999.
A Descriptive Characterization of Tree-Adjoining Languages (Full Version) (gzipped postscript, 78K) (abstract) This is the full version of a paper in the proceedings of COLING-ACL'98 as a project note.
On Defining TALs with Logical Constraints (gzipped postscript 65K) Paper presented at the Fourth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Frameworks (TAG+4), Phila. Aug. 1999.
Thomas Cornell and ---. Model Theoretic Syntax (gzipped postscript 79K) In The Glot International State of the Article Book I Holland Academic Graphics.
The Descriptive Complexity of Generalized Local Sets (gzipped postscript 111K): A paper on the class of sets of trees definable in $L^2_{K,P}$ if we do not include an explicit finite bound on the branching. In Mathematics of Syntactic Structure. Mouton/deGruyter. Collected papers from the workshop of the same name at ESSLLI'96, Prague.
A Unified Notion of Derived and Derivation Structures in TAG (Preliminary version.) (gzipped postscript, 52K) : This is an extended abstract which appears in the MOL 5 proceedings.
Strict LT_2 : Regular :: Local : Recognizable (gzipped postscript 104K): A paper on the descriptive complexity of local sets and on parallels between language-theoretic complexity classes in the domain of strings and those in the domain of trees which was presented at the Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics conference, Villers-l\`es-Nancy, Sept. 1996.
A Model-Theoretic Framework for Theories of Syntax (gzipped postscript, 47K) (abstract): A preprint of a paper which appears in Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
``Grammarless'' Phrase Structure Grammar (gzipped postscript, 112K) (abstract) A preprint of an article that appears in Linguistics and Philosophy, v20:721--746. (Following TR is related.)
What Does a Grammar Formalism Say About a Language? (gzipped postscript 96K) (abstract): A draft of a TR in which a model-theoretic reinterpretation of GPSG is used as the basis of an exploration of some issues in linguistic metatheory.
A First-Order Axiomatization of the Theory of Finite Trees (compressed postscript, 150K) (abstract): A preprint of an article, co-authored by Rolf Backofen and K. Vijay-Shanker, which appears in Vol 4 (pp 5--39) of the Journal of Logic, Language, and Information.
On Descriptive Complexity, Language Complexity,and GB (compressed postscript, 130K) (abstract): A preprint of an article which appears in Specifying Syntactic Structures, papers from the Logic, Structures, and Syntax workshop, Amsterdam, Sept. 1994). This is a brief sketch of the topics covered in A Descriptive Approach to Language-Theoretic Complexity.
Obtaining Trees from Their Descriptions: An Application to Tree-Adjoining Grammars (gzipped postscript 109K) (abstract): A preprint of an article which appears in Vol 10 (pp 401--421) of Computational Intelligence.
Capturing CFLs with Tree Adjoining Grammars (gzipped postscript 54K) (abstract): A preprint of a paper which appears in Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
More to come ...

Curriculum Vitae

(postscript) (pdf)

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James Rogers

Last modified: Tuesday, 23-Jun-2009 11:44:00 EDT