Ann Copestake

     University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
     William Gates Building,
     15 JJ Thomson Avenue
     Cambridge CB3 0FD, UK
     work: (+44) 1223 334615, 
     fax: (+44) 1223 334678
     email: firstname.lastname @cl.cam.ac.uk

Teaching and Research Group Links

LKB system links

Information about the LKB system
Web page for the `LKB book' Implementing typed feature structure grammars. The LKB system documentation is readable from this page.

CSLI studies in Computational Linguistics

I am series editor for CSLI Studies in Computational Linguistics. Please see my CSLI series page for a little more information.

Contacting me

Email is best: I hope everyone can work out my email from the information above. I don't have `office hours': students should email me to arrange a time to meet. Prospective students, interns and so on contacting me for the first time, please read this page about emailing me first.

Research overview

My research is in Natural Language Processing (NLP) / Computational Linguistics, mostly in formal representation issues, compositional and lexical semantics and natural language generation. I am also the original developer of the LKB system which is a freely available grammar and lexicon development environment for constraint-based frameworks including HPSG. I've worked on a variety of application areas including information extraction, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), machine translation, Natural Language Interfaces, lexical acquisition and on tools for lexicographers. I am generally interested in applications involving broad coverage text processing. Some details on ongoing work are available from the project web pages (below). See also current research directions and ideas for projects (mostly MPhil or PhD level).

Current and recently completed projects

DELPH-IN
This is not a conventional funded project but a loosely structured consortium of researchers developing open source grammars and technology for linguistically-motivated NLP. Essentially a generalised or internationalised version of LinGO Linguistic Grammars Online. My main involvement is with the development of semantic representations (MRS/RMRS) and in the LKB grammar development environment. We use DELPH-IN technology in all the funded projects.
SciBorg: Extracting the Science from Scientific Publications
Funded by EPSRC. Dr Simone Teufel is Co-PI. Dr CJ Rupp, Dr Advaith Siddharthan and Dr Peter Corbett worked on this project.
Utterance-level interface for Delph-in, funded by Boeing.
We looked at standardisation of the text interface, allowing for markup and ambiguity in tokenisation. Ben Waldron worked on this project. No project web page but see slides with an overview of the utterance-level interface (putting it in the context of DELPH-IN) and more detailed slides from a presentation by Ben Waldron.
Integrating pragmatic insights with HPSG: an exploration of theoretical and methodological issues
AHRC funded project with Dr Marina Terkourafi, 2006/2007.
Modelling politeness in a Greek HPSG
British Academy funded small research grant with Marina Terkourafi and Aline Villavicencio (2003-2004). Integrating pragmatic insights with HPSG was a follow-on project to this.
Deep Thought
Hybrid Deep and Shallow Methods for Knowledge-intensive Information Extraction. October 2002-October 2004. Funded by the EU, partners were Saarbruecken, NTNU (Norway), Sussex, Cambridge, CELI (Italy) and Xtramind (Germany). Ben Waldron and Anna Ritchie worked on this project in Cambridge.
Multiword expressions
(2001-2004) The aims of the project were to acquire and formally represent multiword expressions, including idioms, compound nouns, phrasal verbs and collocations. This was a part of the general LinGO initiative, it was funded by NTT and carried out jointly with CSLI, Stanford University and NTT. Aline Villavicencio worked on this project in Cambridge. The results are incorporated into the DELPH-IN work in a variety of ways.

Research students

Publications

See my publications list. Many papers and reports are downloadable. There are also links to material from courses at summer schools etc.

List of slides from presentations.

Short Biography

After getting a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge (mostly Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry), I worked for Unilever Research for two years, and then did the Diploma in Computer Science at Cambridge. I started doing research in Natural Language Processing/Computational Linguistics at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in 1985. I worked for ten years on a series of projects, including ACQUILEX. During that time I also did a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Sussex (1990-1992), was a visitor at Xerox PARC (1993/4) and worked on the Verbmobil project for the University of Stuttgart (1994/5). Since July 1994 I have been at CSLI, Stanford University, as a Senior Researcher. I am still affiliated with CSLI but I became a University Lecturer at Cambridge in October 2000 and am now a Reader.

Ann Copestake
Created: February 2, 2001