English Dialogues Research Articles

Research at USC/ISI

This project is developing a model of human communication as a kind of goal-pursuit activity, using naturally-occurring dialogues in English as the subject matter to be modeled. The model represents four principal levels of knowledge in communication: goals being pursued, speech acts used to pursue goals, propositions exchanged while performing speech acts, and linguistic symbols used to convey all of these.

DIAGRAM

An explanatory overview is given of DIAGRAM, a large and complex grammar used in an artificial intelligence system for interpreting English dialogue. DIAGRAM is an augmented phrase-structure grammar with rule procedures that allow phrases to inherit attributes from their constituents and to acquire attributes from the larger phrases in which they themselves are constituents. These attributes are used to set context-sensitive constraints on the acceptance of an analysis. Constraints can be imposed by conditions on dominance as well as by conditions on constituency. Rule procedures can also assign scores to an analysis to rate it as probable or unlikely. Less likely analyses can be ignored by the procedures that interpret the utterance. For every expression it analyzes, DIAGRAM provides an annotated description of the structure. The annotations supply important information for other parts of the system that interpret the expression in the context of a dialogue. Major design decisions are explained and illustrated. Some contrasts with transformational grammars are pointed out and problems that motivate a plan to use metarules in the future are discussed. (Metarules derive new rules from a set of base rules to achieve the kind of generality previously captured by transformational grammars but without having to perform transformations on syntactic analyses.)

Idiomaticity and functional variation: A case study of international amateur radio talk

The linguistic domain of idiomaticity poses many problems for the study of language form, use, and variation. With selected aspects of idiomaticity as a starting point, I will attempt in this paper to develop a description of the use of idioms as a segment of a more general theory of language use. Evidence for this approach is drawn from international amateur radio talk (IART) in English.

Orders of approximation to English dialogue

Orders of approximation to English dialogue

Some social psychological influences on the linguistic performance of black teenagers∗

Black teenagers viewed a series of drawings depicting verbal encounters between two figures. These drawings were administered by either a black or a white experimenter and were accompanied by dialogue and instructions presented in either standard English or black dialect. Transcriptions of subjects’ responses were rated on a set of evaluative dimensions by both experienced nonprofessional (probation officers) and inexperienced professional (English teachers) judges. Subjects’ responses to black dialect were substantially longer and were given more favorable ratings than their responses to standard English. In general, experienced nonprofessionals gave more favorable ratings to subjects’ responses than did inexperienced professionals. These latter judges in turn gave more favorable ratings to responses to drawings accompanied by standard English when these drawings portrayed situations in which English dialogue was appropriate than when they did not. Results provide evidence for a “difference” hypothesis a...

PROGRESS IN DOCUMENTATION

A survey of current work on database systems is presented. The area is divided into three main sectors: data models, data languages and support for database operations. Data models are presented as the link between the database and the real world. Languages range from formal algebraic languages to attempts to use a dialogue in English to formulate queries. The support includes hardware for content addressing, database machines and software techniques for optimizing and evaluating group expressions. Mathematical models are used to organize this support. Throughout there is a tutorial component and evaluation, which in both cases is related to the application of database ideas to documentation.

Conversational language comprehension using integrated pattern-matching and parsing

One of the major problems in natural language understanding by computer is the frequent use of patterned or idiomatic phrases in colloquial English dialogue. Traditional parsing methods typically cannot cope with a significant number of idioms. A more general problem is the tendency of a speaker to leave the meaning of an utterance ambiguous or partially implicit, to be filled in by the hearer from a shared mental context which includes linguistic, social, and physical knowledge. The appropriate representation for this knowledge is a formidable and unsolved problem. We present here an approach to natural language understanding which addresses itself to these problems. Our program uses a series of processing stages which progressively transform an English input into a form usable by our computer simulation of paranoia. Most of the processing stages involve matching the input to an appropriate stored pattern and performing the associated transformation. However, a few key stages perform aspects of traditional parsing which greatly facilitate the overall language recognition process.

GUS, a frame-driven dialog system

GUS is the first of a series of experimental computer systems that we intend to construct as part of a program of research on language understanding. In large measure, these systems will fill the role of periodic progress reports, summarizing what we have learned, assessing the mutual coherence of the various lines of investigation we have been following, and suggesting where more emphasis is needed in future work. GUS (Genial Understander System) is intended to engage a sympathetic and highly cooperative human in an English dialog, directed towards a specific goal within a very restricted domain of discourse. As a starting point, GUS was restricted to the role of a travel agent in a conversation with a client who wants to make a simple return trip to a single city in California. There is good reason for restricting the domain of discourse for a computer system which is to engage in an English dialog. Specializing the subject matter that the system can talk about permits it to achieve some measure of realism without encompassing all the possibilities of human knowledge or of the English language. It also provides the user with specific motivation for participating in the conversation, thus narrowing the range of expectations that GUS must have about the user's purposes. A system restricted in this way will be more able to guide the conversation within the boundaries of its competence.

Automatic programming through English dialogue

The goal of this project is to develop a system which will automatically produce a business application program for a user after carrying on a natural language dialogue with him about his requirements. This can be viewed as an extension of currently existing questionnaire-driven application customizers, such as ACS [1], which automatically produce business application programs from the answers supplied to a series of multiple-choice questions. Each program so produced is a particular version of a very general, parameterized program for that application (e.g. billing).

Access to relational data bases for a casual user

The goal of the RENDEZVOUS Project is to enable a casual user to access relational data bases in natural language without a preliminary training period. The system will, if necessary, engage in an English dialogue with the user in order to arrive at an unambiguous statement of his query. This dialogue serves the triple purpose of aiding the user in his problem specification, of clarifying ambiguities inherent in the English language and of enabling the system to overcome incomprehensible features of the users query. The conversation must constantly narrow the scope of inquiry, resorting to menu selection if necessary until the user and system come to an agreement as to what information has been requested. At any moment during the dialogue, the system must be capable of expressing its current understanding of the user's query in clear and unambiguous English. In particular, the system must be able to rephrase the user's query for approval before execution.

8 mm. Film Project

Mr. Russo from Yalata has written about a project which he is initiating at his school; one two-minute movie film has already been made. Other teachers might like to follow his lead.Basically my idea was to take a movie of certain aspects of the present way of life of the Yalata people with some reference to the past. Examples include:– life stories of noted people,– carving boomerangs and wombats,– cooking of different foods.It was envisaged that the films would be taken by me initially and perhaps by the people and children themselves, after some teaching in night classes in movie taking.It was felt essential that agreement of the School Council be obtained before the project was undertaken and that final edited film should be presented to the Mission and School Councils for preview, review and a final decision about its distribution. The people should not only be informed and participate but also be given the opportunity to take some (if not all) of the responsibility for the presentation of the material.With the permission of the Superintendent and two Aboriginal people a short two minute movie film was made. It was divided into two parts. The first part concerned David Edwards, a Reserve foreman and his work and the other showed Mervyn Day, an Aide in the school, taking a craft class.To further aid my presentation before the School Council and the community (shown at a local film evening) an English and Pitjantjatjara dialogue made with the help of Mervyn Day was played.

Adapting TESL Approaches to the Teaching of Written Standard English as a Second Dialect to Speakers of American Black English Vernacular

A realistic behaviorial objective for students enrolled in an English as a second dialect course is a kind of functional productive competence. This competence consists of the ability to discriminate Black English Vernacular features and instances of cross-dialectal interferences in their writing, and the ability to translate these into their appropriate Standard English equivalents. Adapting TESL approaches-especially Contrastive Analysis, and employing TESL techniques such as acting out dialogues in both BEV and student-rendered Standard English, disguised controlled composition, and disguised pattern drills-the Brooklyn College program draws extensively on the students' own cultural tradition. A sample curriculum unit exemplifies the approach developed by the Language Curriculum Research Group.

Understanding natural language

This paper describes a computer system for understanding English. The system answers questions, executes commands, and accepts information in an interactive English dialog. It is based on the belief that in modeling language understanding, we must deal in an integrated way with all of the aspects of language—syntax, semantics, and inference. The system contains a parser, a recognition grammar of English, programs for semantic analysis, and a general problem solving system. We assume that a computer cannot deal reasonably with language unless it can understand the subject it is discussing. Therefore, the program is given a detailed model of a particular domain. In addition, the system has a simple model of its own mentality. It can remember and discuss its plans and actions as well as carrying them out. It enters into a dialog with a person, responding to English sentences with actions and English replies, asking for clarification when its heuristic programs cannot understand a sentence through the use of syntactic, semantic, contextual, and physical knowledge. Knowledge in the system is represented in the form of procedures, rather than tables of rules or lists of patterns. By developing special procedural representations for syntax, semantics, and inference, we gain flexibility and power. Since each piece of knowledge can be a procedure, it can call directly on any other piece of knowledge in the system.

Jaiaca, The City of Sunrise

OUR CONCERN IN THIS PAPER is a pretty problem set up by a pair of Old English dialogues, primarily occupied with Biblical lore but occasionally wandering off into other kinds of arcane knowledge. One of them is the prose Salomon and Saturn, found in the first portion of M8 Cotton Vitellius A. xv, which is dated by Max Forster auf das zweite Viertel des 12. J ahrhunderts,l and its two Middle English translations, The M aister of Oxford's Catechism, found in 1\188Lansdowne 762 (late XV or early XVI century) and Harley 1304 (XV century).2 The other is Adrian and Ritheus, found in M8 Cotton Julius A. ii, \vhich is perhaps of the twelfth century.3 Both of them are related and derive in some measure from the well-known continental J oca Monachorum. Their personae

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access The Oxford Book of English Talk. Edited by JAMES SUTHERLAND. Pp. xix+453. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953. 18s. net. V. DE S. PINTO V. DE S. PINTO Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume VI, Issue 21, 1955, Pages 104–105, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/VI.21.104 Published: 01 January 1955

The Oxford Book of English Talk

The Oxford Book of English Talk