Research in Natural Language Understanding
Abstract
This report summarizes work done on BBN's ARPA-sponsored natural language understanding project during its second year (from 9/1/78 to 8/31/79). In it we describe in detail a prototype natural language understanding system oriented toward satisfying the information presentation needs of a commander in a command and control context. The system can be requested in English to produce displays of various sorts; it recognizes indirect as well as direct requests by hypothesizing a plan that the user is trying to carry out. The system is designed to be general in its handling of English syntax, indirect speech acts, and arbitrary conceptual descriptions of displays to be produced. It is built out of several substantial components, each of which is described in a chapter in this report: (1) a general knowledge representation language (KL-ONE); (2) a sophisticated state-of-the-art English parser (RUS) and semantic interpretation mechanism (the PSIKLONE Interface); (3) a pragmatics/discourse component capable of plan recognition and understanding indirect speech acts; (4) an intelligent graphics component with an explicit knowledge base describing various object types, display form (shape) types, and coordinate system transformation information.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 31, 1979
- Accession Number
- ADA085917
Entities
People
- J. W. Klovstad
- P. R. Cohen
- R. J. Bobrow
- R. J. Brachman
- William A. Woods
Organizations
- BBN Technologies