Generating Natural Language Under Pragmatic Constraints.
Abstract
Natural Language generation programs written to date are not sensitive to anything but their input, and therefore produce the same output to all hearers in all circumstances. For a generator to produce the various versions of a single input it must have the ability to make appropriate choices about the content and form of its text. Due to the flexibility of language, speakers can communicate far more than just the literal content of the words they use; the additional information usually serves some of their audience-related goals. Thus the generator's choices should be governed by the goals resulting from pragmatic issues such as its knowledge of the hearer and the setting of the conversation. This research investigates the types of interpersonal goals that speakers can have; how they can be made specific enough to direct the generation process; the interpretation of input, but generator-directed inference, to find suitable forms of expression; and the representation of language in a phrasal lexicon. In the model of generation that incorporates these goals, planning and realization are interleaved processes, where the interleaving takes place at choice points. This view supports the standard top-down planning-to-realization approach as well as the bottom-up approach in which linguistic options present themselves as opportunities for the achievement of the active goals. To illustrate these ideas, the program PAULINE (Planning And Uttering Language In Natural Environments) produces, from a single set of input representations in each of three domains, various paragraphs that differ in slant, content, and style.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1987
- Accession Number
- ADA183418
Entities
People
- Eduard H. Hovy
Organizations
- Yale University