The Construction of a Pun Generator for Language Skills Development Humor Generation SoSe 2010 Lourdes Lara Tapia

The Construction of a Pun Generator for Language Skills

Development

Humor Generation

SoSe 2010

Lourdes Lara Tapia

Humor Generation 2 June 29, 2010

Overview

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


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


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.


Introduction

What kind of ambiguity is used here?

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

A saw long.Synonym Meronym

Homophone

A So long

Phonetic similarity Semantic relation


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.



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



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.


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.


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.


JAPE

The three main strategies used to create phonological ambiguity: syllable substitution, word substitution & Metathesis

Joke-construction mechanisms. Very similar to those in STANDUP


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.


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”


STANDUP

Schema Description Rules Templates

Header

Keywords

Answer Spec.Question Spec.

Lexical Precondition Header

Preconditions

Template Spec.

PhrasalQuestion or

Answer

Header

Body


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


STANDUP

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


STANDUP

11 Schema(kind of joke)

Description Rules Templates

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

Keywords:[NP,HomB]

Answer Spec.:{phrase (A,HomB)}

Question Spec.:{Shareprop (NP,HomB)}

Lexical Precondition:Nouncomp(NP,A,B),Homoph(B,HomB),

Noun(HomB)

Header:Shareprop {X,Y}

Preconditions:Meronym(X,MerX),

Syn(Y,SynY)

Template Spec.:[merHyp, MerX, SynY]

Phrasal (finish touches)

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

Header

Body


STANDUP

11 Schema(kind of joke)

Description Rules Templates

Header:Newelan2(NP:computer screen,

A: computer,B: screen,

HomB: scream)

Keywords:[NP,HomB]

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

Question Spec.:{Shareprop (computer screen,

scream)}

Lexical Precondition:Nouncomp(NP,A,B),Homoph(B,HomB),

Noun(HomB)

Header:Shareprop

{computer screen, scream}

Preconditions:Meronym(computer screen, window),

Syn(scream, shout)

Template Spec.:[merSyn, window, shout]

Phrasal (finish touches)

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

Header[merSyn, window, shout]

BodyWhat do you call a

NP(X,Y)

BodyNP(shout) with a

NP(window)

Question What do you call a shout with a window?

HeaderA shout with a window


STANDUP-Lexicon

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


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.


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.


STANDUP-Software

..\STANDUP Simple.bat


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.


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.


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.


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.


Discussion

Questions

Opinion or

Comments


Thank you for your attention


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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The Construction of a Pun Generator for Language Skills Development Humor Generation SoSe 2010 Lourdes Lara Tapia