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

Humor Generation2 June 29, 2010 Overview  Introduction.  Early pun generators.  JAPE.  STANDUP.  STANDUP in the Praxis.  Evaluation  Conclusion.  References.

Humor Generation3 June 29, 2010 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

Humor Generation4 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation5 June 29, 2010 Introduction  What kind of ambiguity is used here?  What do you call a good bye that has a tooth?  A saw long. SynonymMeronym Homophone  A So long Phonetic similarity Semantic relation

Humor Generation6 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation7 June 29, 2010 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

Humor Generation8 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation9 June 29, 2010 JAPE  Joke Analysis and Production Engine.  What is JAPE?  Computer Program  In Prolog by Binsted in  Several Version  JAPE-1 (pilot version) & JAPE2  JAPE-3 & JAPE-4 (more flexible dictionary module)   STANDUP in 2008.

Humor Generation10 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation11 June 29, 2010 JAPE  The three main strategies used to create phonological ambiguity:  syllable substitution,  word substitution &  Metathesis  Joke-construction mechanisms.  Very similar to those in STANDUP

Humor Generation12 June 29, 2010 JAPE Fig. by Ritchie in “The JAPE riddle generator: technical specification”, p. 4

Humor Generation13 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation14 June 29, 2010 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”

Humor Generation15 June 29, 2010 STANDUP Schema Header Lexical Precondition Question Spec.Answer Spec. Keywords Description Rules Header Preconditions Template Spec. Templates Phrasal Question or Answer Header Body

Humor Generation16 June 29, 2010 Fig.

Humor Generation17 June 29, 2010 STANDUP  What do you call a shout with a window?  A computer scream.

Humor Generation18 June 29, 2010 STANDUP 11 Schema (kind of joke) Header: Newelan2(NP,A,B,HomB) Lexical Precondition: Nouncomp(NP,A,B), Homoph(B,HomB), Noun(HomB) Question Spec.: {Shareprop (NP,HomB)} Answer Spec.: {phrase (A,HomB)} Keywords: [NP,HomB] Description Rules Header: Shareprop {X,Y} Preconditions: Meronym(X,MerX), Syn(Y,SynY) Template Spec.: [merHyp, MerX, SynY] Templates Phrasal (finish touches) Question (What is the diff…?) Answer (They’re both…) Header Body

Humor Generation19 June 29, 2010 STANDUP 11 Schema (kind of joke) Header: Newelan2(NP:computer screen, A: computer, B: screen, HomB: scream) Lexical Precondition: Nouncomp(NP,A,B), Homoph(B,HomB), Noun(HomB) Question Spec.: {Shareprop (computer screen, scream)} Answer Spec.: {phrase (computer, scream)} Keywords: [NP,HomB] Description Rules Header: Shareprop {computer screen, scream} Preconditions: Meronym(computer screen, window), Syn(scream, shout) Template Spec.: [merSyn, window, shout] Templates Phrasal (finish touches) Question (What is the diff…?) Answer (They’re both…) Header [merSyn, window, shout] Body What do you call a NP(X,Y) Body NP(shout) with a NP(window) Question What do you call a shout with a window? Header A shout with a window

Humor Generation20 June 29, 2010 STANDUP 11 Schema (kind of joke) Header: Newelan2(NP:computer screen, A: computer, B: screen, HomB: scream) Lexical Precondition: Nouncomp(NP,A,B), Homoph(B,HomB), Noun(HomB) Question Spec.: {Shareprop (computer screen, scream)} Answer Spec.: {phrase (computer, scream)} Keywords: [NP,HomB] Description Rules Header: Shareprop {computer, scream} Preconditions Template Spec.: [simple, computer, scream] Templates Phrasal Question or Answer Header Body Phrasal: A computer scream

Humor Generation21 June 29, 2010 STANDUP-Lexicon  WordNet as JAPE +  Phonetic similarity.  Speech Output.  Picture Support.  Topics.  Familiarity of words.  Vocabulary restriction.

Humor Generation22 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation23 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation24 June 29, 2010 STANDUP-Software ..\STANDUP Simple.bat..\STANDUP Simple.bat

Humor Generation25 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation26 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation27 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation28 June 29, 2010 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.

Humor Generation29 June 29, 2010 Discussion  Questions   Opinion or   Comments

Humor Generation30 June 29, 2010 Thank you for your attention

Humor Generation31 June 29, 2010 References  Binsted, K Machine humour: An implemented model of puns. Ph. D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.  Binsted, K., H. Pain, and G. Ritchie Children's evaluation of computer generated punning riddles. Pragmatics and Cognition 5 (2),  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  Ritchie, G Current directions in computational humour. Artificial Intelligence Review 16 (2),  Ritchie, G 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 HAHAcronym: Humorous agents for humorous acronyms. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 16 (3),   