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The Construction of a Pun Generator for Language Skills Development

Humor Generation SoSe 2010 Lourdes Lara Tapia

Overview        

Introduction. Early pun generators. JAPE. STANDUP. STANDUP in the Praxis. Evaluation Conclusion. References.

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Introduction  What is a Pun Generator?  A pun Generator is a Computer Program which generates jokes.  What is a Joke?  It is a short text which provoke laughter.  A joke has normally a Punchline.  There are different kind of Jokes:  Punning riddles

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Introduction  A punning riddle is a simple question-answer

joke in which the answer makes a play on words:  What do you call a good bye that has a tooth?  A saw long.

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Introduction  What kind of ambiguity is used here? Phonetic similarity

Semantic relation

 What do you call a good bye that has a tooth?

Synonym

 A saw long.

Meronym

Homophone

 A So long

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Early pun generators  Raskin (1985):  Incongruity Theory.

 Lesard & Levison (1992):  VINCI: Tom Swift  “we must hurry”, said Tom Swiftly.  “I hate Math”, Tom added

 Binsted & Ritchie (1994):  JAPE:  Punning riddle uses phonological and semantical ambiguity  Used a large lexicon (WordNet)  Properly controlled evaluation of the output was carried out.

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Early pun generators  Venour (1999):  The Homonym Common Phrase Pun (HCPP).  A one-sentence set-up &  A punning punchline.  Mechanismus are similar to those used in JAPE

 McKay (2002):  WISCRAIC:  Simple puns in 3-different linguistic forms:  Question-answer, single and two-sentences sequence.

 Support 2nd-language learning

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Early pun generators  Nijholt (2003):  Communication with machines.  Stock et al. (2005):  HAHAcronym:  Acronym  funny concepts  Concept  funny Acronym

 Mihalcea & Strapparava (2006):  Techniques to humor recognition:  Humurous and non-humorous.

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JAPE  Joke Analysis and Production Engine.  What is JAPE?  Computer Program  In Prolog by Binsted in 1994.

 Several Version  JAPE-1 (pilot version) & JAPE2  JAPE-3 & JAPE-4 (more flexible dictionary module)   STANDUP in 2008.

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JAPE  JAPE produced short texts

 punning

riddles:

 What is the difference between a pretty glove and a

silent cat?  One is a cute mitten, the other is a mute kitten.

 The Jokes were reliably distinguished from Non-

Jokes.  The best of these were published in joke books for children.

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JAPE  The three main strategies used to create

phonological ambiguity:  syllable substitution,  word substitution &

 Metathesis

 Joke-construction mechanisms.  Very similar to those in STANDUP

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JAPE  Deficiencies:  Few parameters available for variation.  There was no way to guide the software.  No real user interface.  The search for suitable words could be slow, unintelligent and exhaustive.  Good intelligible jokes was very small.  No facilities to compare words for phonological or semantically ambiguity.

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STANDUP  System To Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using

Puns.  This Program is aimed at young children, and lets them

   

play with words and phrases by building punning riddles through a simple interactive user-interface. Allow young children to explore the language. Children with Complex Communication Needs (CNN). Punning riddle. “Language playground”

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STANDUP Schema

Description Rules

Templates

Phrasal Question or Answer

Header

Lexical Precondition

Header

Question Spec.

Answer Spec.

Preconditions

Header

Template Spec.

Body

Keywords

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Fig. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/papers/humor-IEEE.pdf

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STANDUP  What do you call a shout with a window?  A computer scream.

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STANDUP 11 Schema (kind of joke)

Description Rules

Templates

Lexical Precondition: Header: Newelan2(NP,A,B,HomB)

Nouncomp(NP,A,B), Homoph(B,HomB), Noun(HomB)

Question Spec.:

Answer Spec.:

{Shareprop (NP,HomB)}

{phrase (A,HomB)}

Header: Shareprop {X,Y}

Preconditions: Meronym(X,MerX), Syn(Y,SynY)

Keywords:

Template Spec.:

[NP,HomB]

[merHyp, MerX, SynY]

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Phrasal (finish touches) Question (What is the diff…?) Answer (They’re both…)

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Header

Body

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STANDUP 11 Schema (kind of joke)

Description Rules

Templates

Header:

Lexical Precondition:

Header:

Newelan2(NP:computer screen, A: computer, B: screen, HomB: scream)

Nouncomp(NP,A,B), Homoph(B,HomB), Noun(HomB)

Shareprop {computer screen, scream}

Question Spec.: {Shareprop (computer screen, scream)}

Preconditions:

Answer Spec.: {phrase (computer, scream)}

Meronym(computer screen, window), Syn(scream, shout)

Keywords:

Template Spec.:

[NP,HomB]

[merSyn, window, shout]

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Phrasal (finish touches) Question Question (What is the diff…?) What do you call a shout with a window? Answer (They’re both…)

Humor Generation

Header A shout with a window [merSyn, window, shout]

Body Body What do you call a NP(shout) with a NP(X,Y) NP(window)

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STANDUP-Lexicon  WordNet as JAPE +  Phonetic similarity.  Speech Output.  Picture Support.  Topics.  Familiarity of words.  Vocabulary restriction.

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STANDUP-Facilities  Joke telling:  VOCA: Voice-Output Communication Aid.  assists people who are unable to use natural speech to express their needs and exchange information with other people during a conversation.  User Profiles:  Username.  Two kind of data:  Option settings.  Personal Data.  Standard Package:  Beginner  Touchscreen-user.

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STANDUP-Facilities  Logging:  Logged in a Disc file:  Allows researchers to study usage as required.

 Log player

 Dump the simulated re-runs into a video file.

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STANDUP-Software  ..\STANDUP Simple.bat

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STANDUP-Evaluation  Evaluate the effectiveness of the software.  No ambitious but qualitative study.  A group of 9 children (8-12years old) with cerebral palsy.  Scholars used the software spontaneously,  Found the “Tell the jokes-function” amazing and  Re-told the jokes afterwards.  8 children reacted very positively  1 of the older boys complained about the quality of the Jokes.  Anecdotal evidence: Children’s communication had improved.

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STANDUP-Evaluation  In the post-testing:  The Preschool and Primary Inventory of Phonological Awareness, PIPA, showed no sign of improved.  Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, CELF, only the older boy, who complained, showed no sign of improved.

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Conclusion  Humor is one of the most sophisticated forms

of human intelligence.  On the cognitive side humor has two very important properties:  it helps getting and keeping people’s attention.  it helps remembering.

 On the artificial intelligence side

computational humor is a challenge with implications for many classical fields. June 29, 2010

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Conclusion  The development of all its facets is not

something for the near future, the phenomena are too complex.  Simple puns, at least, can be modelled formally, and can be generated by a program.  The software is definitely usable for a practical application by children with communication disabilities to develop their linguistic skills. June 29, 2010

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Discussion  Questions   Opinion or   Comments

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Thank you for your attention

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References     

   

Binsted, K. 1996. Machine humour: An implemented model of puns. Ph. D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. Binsted, K., H. Pain, and G. Ritchie. 1997. Children's evaluation of computer generated punning riddles. Pragmatics and Cognition 5 (2), 305-354. Manurung, R., G. Ritchie, H. Pain, A. Waller, D. O'Mara, R. Black (2008). The construction of a pun generator for language skills development. Applied Artificial Intelligence, 22(9) pp. 841-869. Ritchie, G. 2001. Current directions in computational humour. Artificial Intelligence Review 16 (2), 119-135. Ritchie, G. 2003. The JAPE riddle generator: technical specification. Informatics Research Report EDI-INF-RR-0158, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Stock, O. and C. Strapparava. 2003. HAHAcronym: Humorous agents for humorous acronyms. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 16 (3), 297-314. http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~gritchie/ http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/research/standup/software.php http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/research/standup/downloads/UserManual.html

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