Henry Beecher

I’m a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department at UCSD. My research focuses on the development and use computational methods for modeling syntactic and language processing phenomena such as anaphoric dependencies and pragmatic inference. My advisor is Andrew Kehler.

In my thesis research I am investigating web-based computational approaches to resolving bridging anaphora. In particular, I am studying how statistical/frequency information extracted from the web can emulate the role of ‘world knowledge’ needed to infer semantic dependencies between/among whole NPs in discourse.

Contact Information: Department of Linguistics University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0108 Phone: (858) 534-2523 Fax: (858) 534-4789 Email: 1@2.edu (1 = hbeecher and 2 = ucsd) Office: AP&M-4331 Lab: AP&M-2442 (AndyLab)

Research Interests:

• Computational Linguistics
• Language Processing
• Syntax/Semantic Interface
• Altaic & Japanese Languages

     Draft Papers:

• Beecher, H. (2007). Using the Web to Resolve Definite Bridging Descriptions. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2006). Pragmatic Licensing of Sluiced Prepositional Phrases. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2006). Pragmatic Licensing of Redundant VPCs. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2005). A Uniform Treatment of Particle Transitivity in VPCs. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2004). Classifying Web Pages by Function. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2004). Derivational Paradigm in Word Formation. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2004). Three Varieties of Serial Verb Constructions in Vietnamese. Ms. University of California, San Diego.
• Beecher, H. (2003). Stem Faithfulness in the Derivational Morphology of Italian. Ms. University of California, San Diego.

Presentations:

• Beecher, H. (03/30/07). Interpreting Sluiced Prepositional Phrases (poster). Poster presented at the 20th CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, La Jolla, CA.
• Beecher, H. (03/20/07). Interpreting Sluiced Prepositional Phrases (talk). Presented at the Fifth Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research, Cambridge, UK.
• Beecher, H. (02/20/07). Pragmatic Licensing of Sluiced Prepositional Phrases (handout). Presented to the Center for Research in Language (UCSD).

Publications:

• Beecher, H. (2007) Pragmatic Inference in the Interpretation of Sluiced Prepositional Phrases. In Proceedings of the Fifth Cambridge Postgraduate Conference in Language Research, pp. 9-16, Cambridge, UK. View abstract | Whole paper

Current teaching-related duty:

     Spring 2009 I will be a TA for LIGN8 taught by Prof. Bakovic.


     Less recent publications:

Beecher, H. (1991) Public access workstations in the library. Wilson Library Bulletin. v65 n6 pp52-55.

Beecher, H. (1990) A DOS primer for librarians: Part 2. Wilson Library Bulletin. v64 n8 pp25-30.

Beecher, H. (1989) A DOS primer for librarians. Wilson Library Bulletin. v64 n1 pp42-45.

      Some Favorite Links.

The Association for Computational Linguistics

American Association for Artificial Intelligence (NLP)

Corpus Linguistics

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