I am a Research Fellow on the Gen-Meta project, investigating ways of generating metaphor in natural language. This project is hosted by the School of Computer Science, at the University of Birmingham, and is funded by a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship.

I also maintain links with the UAEU Department of Linguistics, where I recently worked as an Assistant Professor.

office: Edgbaston Campus, Building Y9, Room 106
phone: +44-121-414-6749
fax: +44-121-414-4281
e-mail: a.d.gargett[AT]cs.bham.ac.uk
s-mail: Contact details for the School of Computer Science can be found here.

Research

  • Natural language processing: generation of figurative language, especially metaphor
  • Corpus linguistics: the relationship between figurative language and multi-word expressions; situated dialogue (e.g. task-based dialogues in virtual worlds); technology for language documentation
  • Artificial intelligence: modelling cognitive phenomena by combining knowlege-intensive and data-intensive techniques
  • General linguistics: phonology and phonetics of segmental and prosodic phenomena in Gulf Arabic; interaction between syntactic and prosodic systems; specific dialogue phenomena (up to now: feedback, repair, intonation); forms of person reference across languages; figurative language (especialy metaphor and metonymy)
  • Research languages: Australian Aboriginal languages; Arabic; Languages of Sulawesi

Corpora

  • "GAralogVE: Corpus of Gulf Arabic Dialogue in a Virtual Environment": forthcoming
  • Databases of Emirati Arabic phonemes and prosody: forthcoming
  • "The GIVE-2 Corpus of Giving Instructions in Virtual Environments": completed, available here

Publications and presentations

Publications

Gargett, A. and Barnden, J.B. (submitted). "Gen-Meta: Generating metaphors using a combination of AI reasoning and corpus-based modeling of formulaic expressions."

Gargett, A. (2012). "Feedback and action in dialogue: signals or symptoms?" In Proceedings of Workshop on Feedback in Dialogue, Interspeech 2012, Portland, Oregon.

Gargett, A. and Barnden, J.B. (2012). "Gen-Meta: a hybrid reasoning and data-oriented approach to generating metaphor". In Proceedings of the IV Congresso Internacional Sobre Metafora na Linguagem e no Pensamento, Porto Alegre, Outubro 2011. Porto Alegre: Instituto de Letras/UFRGS. Pages 692--712.

Gargett, A. (2011). A Salvage Grammar of Malgana, the Language of Shark Bay, Western Australia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics (PL 624).

Gargett, A. (2011). "Incrementality and the dynamics of routines in dialogue." Dialogue and Discourse: Special issue on Incremental Processing in Dialogue (edited by Hannes Rieser & David Schlangen) Volume 2(1): 171-197.

Koller, A., Striegnitz, K., Gargett, A., Byron, D., Cassell, J., Dale, R., Moore, J. and Oberlander, J. (2010). "Report on the Second NLG Challenge on Generating Instructions in Virtual Environments (GIVE-2)". In Proceedings of the Sixth International Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG 2010).

Koller, A., A. Gargett, and K. Garoufi. (2010). "A scalable model of planning perlocutionary acts." Proceedings of the 14th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (PozDial), Poznan.

Gargett, A., K. Garoufi,. A. Koller and K. Striegnitz. (2010). "The Give-2 Corpus of Giving Instructions in Virtual Environments." LREC 2010.

Gargett, A. (2010). "Modelling Routinisation and Innovation in Dialogue." In Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence 2010. (Extended abstract for poster, included in conference booklet.)

Gargett, A. Routinisation and context in dialogue. (2010). PhD thesis. King's College London.

Gargett, A., E. Gregoromichelaki, R. Kempson, M. Purver and Y. Sato. (2009). "Grammar Resources for Modelling Dialogue Dynamically." Cognitive Neurodynamics 3(4).

Kempson, R., E. Gregoromichelaki, M. Purver, G.J. Mills, A. Gargett and C. Howes. (2009). "How Mechanistic Can Accounts of Interaction Be?" In Proceedings of DIAHOLMIA 2009: the 13th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.

Gregoromichelaki, E., Y. Sato, R. Kempson, A. Gargett and C. Howes. (2009). "Dialogue Modelling and the Remit of Core Grammar." In Proceedings of IWCS 2009.

Kempson, R., Gargett, A., Gregoromichelaki, E., Howes,C. and Y. Sato. (2008). "Towards a Unified Account of Ellipsis: Syntax as Time-linear Building of Semantic Representations." In Proceedings of ESSLLI 2008 Workshop: What Syntax Feeds Semantics. Hamburg.

Gargett, A., E. Gregoromichelaki, C. Howes and Y. Sato. (2008). "Dialogue-Grammar Correspondence in Dynamic Syntax." In Proceedings of LONDIAL 2008: the 12th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.

Kempson, R., A. Gargett and E. Gregoromichelaki. (2007). "Incremental Fragment Construal." In Proceedings of DECALOG'07: the 11th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue.

Gargett, A. (2007). "An Incremental Model of Fragments in Dialogue." In V.V. Nurmi & D. Sustretov eds. Proceedings ESSLLI Student Session. Dublin, Ireland.


Presentations

"Gathering situated dialogue in the field" (with Sam Hellmuth). Paper presentation to Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 4 Conference, December 2013, London, UK.

"Feedback and action in dialogue: signals or symptoms?" Poster presentation at Workshop on Feedback in Dialogue, Interspeech 2012, September 2012, Portland, Oregon.

"Annotating Framenet for Polysemy: Toward a Resource for Identifying Metaphor in Corpora" (with Josef Ruppenhofer). Presentation to 4th International Conference on Metaphor in Language and Thought, Central Campus of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, October 2011, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

"Toward generating metaphor in dialogue" (with John Barnden). Presentation to 4th International Conference on Metaphor in Language and Thought, Central Campus of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, October 2011, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

"Routinisation and context in dialogue." Presentation to SFB 673, Bielefeld University, November 2010, Germany.

"Speaking figuratively" (with John Barnden). SOAS, November 2010, London.

"Routines, context, and figurative language in dialogue." Presentation to Centre for Language Technology, Gothenburg University, August 2010, Sweden.

"Can names be translated, or must they be borrowed?" Presentation to Linguistics Seminar, Gothenburg University, August 2010, Sweden.

"Modelling Routinisation and Innovation in Dialogue." Poster presentation at Linguistic Evidence 2010, January 2010, Tuebingen, Germany.

"Fragments and Constructions: a Procedural Account." Poster presentation at Language, Communication, Cognition, International Conference, August 2008, Brighton, UK.

"Toward a Model of Dialogue via an Interactive Language Model." Paper presentation at 2nd UK Postgraduate Conference in Cognitive Linguistics, August 2008, Brighton, UK.

"Dialogue-Grammar Correspondence in Dynamic Syntax" (with R. Kempson, E. Gregoromichelaki, C. Howes & Y. Sato). Paper presentation at ESSLLI 2008, August 2008, Hamburg, Germany.

"Toward an Interactive Model of Person Reference." Paper presentation at The 3rd Newcastle Postgraduate Conference in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, July 2008, Newcastle, UK.

"Ellipsis as a Window on Context: An Integrated Account" (with R. Kempson, E. Gregoromichelaki, C. Howes & Y. Sato). Paper presentation at workshop on Utterance interpretation and cognitive models II, July 2008, Brussels.

"The Role of Grammar in Dialogue Phenomena" (with E. Gregoromichelaki, C. Howes & Y. Sato). Paper presentation at LONDIAL'08, June 2008, London, UK.

"Clarification Requests: an incremental account" (with E. Gregoromichelaki & R. Kempson). Paper presentation at 2007 LAGB Annual Meeting, August 2007, London, UK.

"An Incremental Model of Fragments in Dialogue." Paper presentation at Student Session of 2007 ESSLLI, August 2007, Dublin, Republic Ireland.

"Incremental Fragment Construal" (with E. Gregoromichelaki & R. Kempson). Paper presentation at DECALOG'07: The 2007 Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue, May 2007, Rovereto, Italy.

"Interpretation and re-presentation of historical language materials: Laves' 1931 Nyungar notes." (with John Henderson, David Nash and D. Harry) Paper presentation to the Annual Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society, Newcastle University, September 2003, Newcastle, Australia.