This paper describes PAL--a new computer language. It is used as a pedagogical vehicle in an undergraduate subject called "Programming Linguistics." This subject is designed primarily for sophomores who anticipate a major professional interest in computer science and has two objectives. The first is to study linguistic constructs for the…

An obstacle in Natural Language understanding is the existence of lexical gaps, i.e. words or word senses that are not in the lexicon of the system. This thesis describes the implementation of MURRAY, a learning mechanism which infers the properties of a new lexical item from its syntactical environment and infers its meaning based on context and…

A study to facilitate computer generation of test items succeeded in developing a set of criteria which could be used by a computer to select sentences suitable for sentence completion question items. The sentence completion item requires the student to complete a sentence from which one or more words have been deleted. Analysis of 110 appropriate…

Compares the success of lexical statistics, content analysis, and function words in determining the true author of "The Federalist." The function word approach proved most successful in attributing the papers to James Madison. Lexical statistics contributed nothing, while content analytic measures resulted in some success. (MJP)