YORK UNIVERSITY

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Faculty of Science and Engineering

James A.(Jim) Mason

Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Senior Scholar
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Email: jmason (at) yorku.ca
     


I have retired from teaching to devote more time to my research.  For matters regarding the Computer Science degree programs please see the Department of Computer Science and Engineering web site.


My research involves natural-language understanding -- specifically, writing software to understand English in limited application domains. I am continuing to develop object-oriented software tools to create and edit English grammars in the form of graphical networks called Augmented Syntax Diagrams (ASDs), and to parse English utterances with ASD grammars.   Recently I have extended the use of ASDs to implement decision networks as well as grammars.  Also, I have implemented several successive models of English-language understanding in a domain called CardWorld.  That domain  is well suited to building and testing linguistic and cognitive models which actually work as components in simulated conversational partners.

The tools and models are available in Java implementations, free of charge, under an open-source Apache license.  To access them, see the ASD home page :

ASD home page



Here's a link to one of my favourite sites: Astronomy Picture of the Day

This link is to some philosophical musings of mine.  Warning: If you are offended by religious views that may differ from your own, please use "viewer discretion" and don't read them.  The views are my own.

updated 2012 Sept. 5