Ronald M. Kaplan (born 1946) has served as a Vice President at Amazon.com and Chief Scientist for Amazon Search ( A9.com). He was previously Vice President and Distinguished Scientist at

Nuance Communications Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. Nuance merged with its compe ...

and director of Nuance' Natural Language and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Prior to that he served as Chief Scientist and a Principal Researcher at the

Powerset In mathematics, the power set (or powerset) of a set is the set of all subsets of , including the empty set and itself. In axiomatic set theory (as developed, for example, in the ZFC axioms), the existence of the power set of any set is post ...

division of

Microsoft Bing Microsoft Bing (commonly known as Bing) is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety ...

. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Linguistics Department at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and a Principal of Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI). He was previously a Research Fellow at the

Palo Alto Research Center PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

(formerly the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center), where he was the manager of research in Natural Language Theory and Technology. He received his bachelor's degree (1968) in Mathematics and Language Behavior from the University of California, Berkeley and his Master's (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) in

Social Psychology Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

. As a graduate student he investigated how explicit computational models of

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...

, particularly Augmented Transition Networks, could be embedded in models of human language performance, and he wrote the grammar for the LUNAR system, the first large-scale ATN grammar of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

. He also developed the notions of consumer-producer and active-chart parsing. He designed (in collaboration with

Joan Bresnan Joan Wanda Bresnan FBA (born August 22, 1945) is Sadie Dernham Patek Professor in Humanities Emerita at Stanford University. She is best known as one of the architects (with Ronald Kaplan) of the theoretical framework of lexical functional gram ...

) the formal theory of Lexical Functional Grammar and produced its initial computational implementation. He developed (with

Martin Kay Martin Kay (1935 – 8 August 2021) was a computer scientist, known especially for his work in computational linguistics. Born and raised in the United Kingdom, he received his M.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1961. In 1958 he started ...

) the mathematical, linguistic, and computational concepts that underlie the use of finite-state

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

and morphological descriptions. He helped to embed finite-state methods in a wide range of commercial products offered by Xerox and by several Xerox spin-off companies: Microlytics, Inxight, and

Scansoft Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. Nuance merged with its compe ...

. In the 1980s he served as Chief Scientist of Microlytics. He holds 36 patents for inventions in the language technology field. He was honored with the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the

Association for Computational Linguistics The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is a scientific and professional organization for people working on natural language processing. Its namesake conference is one of the primary high impact conferences for natural language proces ...

(ACL). He is a past President (1979) and an inaugural Fellow (2011) of the ACL, a co-recipient of the 1992 ACM Software Systems Award for his contribution to the

Interlisp Interlisp (also seen with a variety of capitalizations) is a programming environment built around a version of the programming language Lisp. Interlisp development began in 1966 at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (renamed BBN Technologies) in Cambridge, ...

programming system, and a Fellow of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

. He is also a Fellow of the

Cognitive Science Society The Cognitive Science Society is a professional society for the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science. It brings together researchers from many fields who hold the common goal of understanding the nature of the human mind. The society p ...

. During 1995–1996 he was a Fellow-in-Residence at the

Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is an independent research institute in the field of the humanities and social and behavioural sciences founded in 1970. The instit ...

in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2006, he was honored with a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the ...

titled ''Intelligent linguistic architectures: variations on themes by Ronald M. Kaplan'', published by

CSLI Publications Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Copenhagen University in 2013 and from the University of York in 2019.

External links

* ACM Award for Interlis

''Intelligent Linguistic Architectures''
CSLI book about Kaplan's work. {{DEFAULTSORT:Kaplan, Ronald M. Living people 1946 births American computer scientists Harvard University alumni Stanford University Department of Linguistics faculty Computational linguistics researchers Scientists at PARC (company) Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the Association for Computational Linguistics Lisp (programming language) people