Humor in Computers and Science

Victor Raskin is a linguist, and linguists tend to deal with one sentence at a time. But Rasin used Script Model Grammar to deal with longer utterances. Script Model Grammar allows linguists to deal with larger texts. Raskin talks about the structure of a joke by saying that everything in the set-up of the joke is ambiguous but primed in the direction of the mundane. What the punch line of a joke does is to change the priming of the joke from the mundane to the dramatic, or scatological, etc. At this point the audience is able to see that the entire joke—set-up and punch line—have been ambiguous, and that the punch line has just changed the priming. Because the punch line allows the audience to see all of the ambiguity of the joke (both mundane and dramatic), the punch line is very epiphanal.

Using the techniques of Script-Model Grammar as developed by Victor Raskin, Salvatore Attardo and others, develop a number of mundane scripts for your computer, as follows:

Eating at a restaurant

Getting a haircut

Getting dressed in the morning

Going to a concert

Going to a movie

Telling a joke or a story

Traveling by car

Traveling by plane

Traveling by subway

Traveling by train

Etc.

Tell your computer the details of the script in terms of a sequence of behaviors. For example, consider the script of “eating at a restaurant.”

1. You get hungry.

2. You look for a restaurant.

3. You find a restaurant.

4. You walk into the restaurant.

5. You’re seated by someone.

6. The server brings you a menu.

7. You look at the menu.

8. You order your meal.

9. You eat your meal.

10. Someone brings you a bill.

11. You pay the bill.

12. You leave a tip.

13. You leave the restaurant.

But what if one or more of the sequence of behaviors is missing? Or what if one or more behaviors are added to the sequence? The computer can then ask, “Why didn’t he leave a tip? Or “Why did he take his bike into the restaurant?” The computer has been taught how to speculate.

What Victor Raskin did for jokes (small texts), Salvatore Attardo did for larger texts (paragraphs, chapters plays, novels, trilogies, etc.). And rather than just dealing with the set-up, the punch-line, and the epiphany of the joke, Attardo developed ways of dealing with double entendre, embodiment, irony, metaphor, metonymy, paradox, parody, sarcasm, satire, synecdoche, allegory, and other types of “language play.” An even more important contribution of Script-Model Grammar, is its applications to the field of Artificial Intelligence. This brings us to the contributions of Christian Hempelmann, Anton Nijholt, Dallin Oaks, Leo Obrst, Maxim Petrenko, Graeme Ritchie, Julia Taylor, Willibald Ruch, Oliviero Stock, Carlo Strapparava, Igor Suslov, Tony Veale and others.

To further explore the applications of Script-Model Grammar, contact the following: Salvatore Attardo [email protected] , Christian Hempelmann [email protected] , Dallin Oaks [email protected], Anton Nijholt [email protected] , Leo Obrst [email protected] , Maxim Petrenko [email protected] , Victor Raskin [email protected] , Graeme Ritchie [email protected] , Julia Taylor [email protected] , Willibald Ruch [email protected] , Oliviero Stock [email protected] , Carlo Strapparava [email protected] , Igor Suslov [email protected] , and Tony Veale [email protected] .

So, Artificial Intelligence is now dealing with such concepts as metaphor, irony, parody, paradox, satire, sarcasm, speculation, linguistic humor, and language play?