Common Sense and Language - 2014

Explore the relationship between common sense and natural language understanding in this 46-minute lecture by Ben Van Durme from the Center for Language & Speech Processing at Johns Hopkins University. Delve into the widely held assumption that significant general world knowledge is essential for language comprehension. Examine various approaches to automatically acquiring common sense knowledge, including generalization from situational descriptions and interpretation of generic sentences. Analyze the challenges in obtaining quantifier domain restrictions and strengths necessary for full generic interpretation from standard text corpora. Consider the obstacles in moving from 'possible' to 'probable' interpretations of generics when acquiring general world knowledge for natural language understanding. This talk, part of the Frederick Jelinek Memorial Workshop 2014, offers valuable insights into the complexities of common sense acquisition for language processing applications.