Beyond Question-Answering.

Abstract

We demonstrate, using protocols of actual interactions with a question-answering system, that users of these systems expect to engage in a conversation whose coherence is manifested in the interpendence of their (often unstated) plans and goals with those of the system. Since these problems are even more obvious in other forms of natural-language understanding systems, such as task-oriented dialogue systems, techniques for engaging in question-answering conversation should be special cases of general conversational abilities. We characterize dimensions along which language understanding systems might differ and, based partly on this analysis, propose a new system architecture, centered around recognizing the user's plans and planning helpful responses, which can be applied to a number of possible application areas. To illustrate progress to date, we discuss two implemented systems, one operating in a simple question-answering framework, and the other in a decision support framework for which both graphic and linguistic means of communication are available. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 15, 1981
Accession Number
ADA100432

Entities

People

  • C. Raymond Perrault
  • James F. Allen
  • Philip R. Cohen

Organizations

  • BBN Technologies

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Science
  • Contracts
  • Databases
  • Dialogue Systems
  • Foreign Object Damage
  • Information Processing
  • Information Science
  • Information Systems
  • Language
  • Military Research
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Natural Language Understanding
  • Natural Languages
  • Recognition

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics
  • Strategic Security Studies