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From: sts@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stanley T Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: So the language analysis problem has been solved?!?
Message-ID: <466@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 15:47:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.466
Posted: Wed Aug 24 15:47:11 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Aug-83 04:36:59 EDT
References: <4442@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace, Seattle
Lines: 37

Heh-heh.  Thought that'd raise a few hackles (my boss didn't approve
of the article; oh well.  I tend to be a bit fiery around the edges).

The claim is that we have "basically" solved the problem.  Actually,
we're not the only ones - the APE-II parser by Pazzani and others
from the Schank school have also done the same thing.  Our parser
can handle arbitrarily ambiguous sentences, generating *all* the
possible meanings, limited only by the size of its knowledge base.
We have the capability to do any sort of idiom, and mix any number
of natural languages.  Our problems are really concerned with the
acquisition of linguistic knowledge, either by having nonspecialists
put it in by hand (*everyone* is an expert on the native language)
or by having the machine acquire it automatically.  We can mail out
some details if anyone is interested.

One advantage we had is starting from ground zero, so we had very few
preconceptions about how language analysis ought to be done, and scanned
the literature.  It became apparent that since we were required to
handle free-form input, any kind of grammar would eventually become
less than useful and possibly a hindrance to analysis.  Mr. Pereira
admits as much when he says that grammars only reflect *some* aspects
of language.  Well, that's not good enough.  Us folks in applied
research can't always afford the luxury of theorizing about the most
elegant methods.  We need something that models human cognition
closely enough to make sense to knowledge engineers and to users.
So I'm sort of in the Schank camp (folks at SRI hate 'em) although
I try to keep my thinking as independent as possible (hard when
each camp is calling the other ones charlatans; I'll post something
on that pernicious behavior eventually).

Parallel production systems I'll save for another article...

					stan the leprechaun hacker
					ssc-vax!sts (soon utah-cs)

ps I *did* read an article of Mr. Pereira's - couldn't understand
the point.  Sorry.  (perhaps he would be so good as to explain?)