Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!SMUVM1.BITNET!E1AR0002 From: E1AR0002@SMUVM1.BITNET Newsgroups: mod.techreports Subject: st11.x tech reports Message-ID: <8611062207.AA22120@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Thu, 6-Nov-86 18:04:07 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8611062207.AA22120 Posted: Thu Nov 6 18:04:07 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 7-Nov-86 22:35:57 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 341 Approved: techreports@smu.csnet TECHNICAL NOTE: 203\hfill PRICE: \$14.00\\[0.01in] \noindent TITLE: CONVERSATION AS PLANNED BEHAVIOR\\ AUTHORS: JERRY H. HOBBS and DAVID A. EVANS\\ DATE: DECEMBER 1979\\[0.01in] ABSTRACT: Perhaps the most promising working hypothesis for the study of conversation is that the participants can be viewed as using planning mechanisms much like those developed in artificial intelligence. In this paper, a framework for investigating conversation, which for convenience will be called the Planning Approach, is developed from this hypothesis. It suggests a style of analysis to apply to conversation, analysis in terms of the participants' goals, plans, and beliefs, and it indicates a consequent program of research to be pursued. These are developed in detail in Part 2. Parts 3 and 4 are devoted to the microanalysis of an actual free-flowing conversation, as an illustration of the style of analysis. In the process, order is discovered in a conversation that on the surface seems quite incoherent. The microanalysis suggests some ways in which the planning mechanisms common in artificial intelligence will have to be extended to deal with conversation, and these are discussed in Part 5. In Part 6, certain methdological difficulties are examined. Part 7 addresses the problem that arises in this approach of what constitutes successful communication.\\ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------\\ TECHNICAL NOTE: 204\hfill PRICE: \$12.00\\[0.01in] \noindent TITLE: METAPHOR, METAPHOR SCHEMATA, AND SELECTIVE INFERENCING\\ AUTHOR: JERRY R. HOBBS\\ DATE: DECEMBER 1979\\[0.01in] ABSTRACT: The importance of spatial and other metaphors is demonstrated. An approach to handling metaphor in a computational framework is described, based on the idea of selective inferencing. Three examples of metaphors are examined in detail in this light--a simple metaphor, a spatial metaphor schema, and a novel metaphor. Finally, there is a discussion, from this perspective, of the analogical processes that underlie metaphor in this approach and what the approach says about several classical questions about metaphor.\\ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------\\ TECHNICAL NOTE: 205\hfill PRICE: \$16.00\\[0.01in] \noindent TITLE: DIAGRAM: A GRAMMAR FOR DIALOGUES\\ AUTHOR: JANE J. ROBINSON\\ DATE: FEBRUARY 1980\\[0.01in] ABSTRACT: This paper presents an explanatory overview of a large and complex grammar, DIAGRAM, that is used in a computer system for interpreting English dialogue. DIAGRAM analyzes all of the basic kinds of phrases and sentences and many quite complex ones as well. It is not tied to a particular domain of application, and it can be extended to analyze additional constructions, using the formalism in which it is currently written. For every expression it analyzes, DIAGRAM provides an annotated description of the structural relations holding among its constituents. The annotations provide important information for other parts of the system that interpret the expression in the context of a dialogue. DIAGRAM is an augmented phrase structure grammar. Its rule procedures allow phrases to inherit attributes from their constituents and to acquire attributes from the larger phrases in which they themselves are constituents. Consequently, when these attributes are used to set context-sensitive constraints on the acceptance of an analysis, the contextual constraints can be imposed by conditions on dominance as well as conditions on constituency. Rule procedures can also assign scores to an analysis, rating some applications of a rule as probable or as unlikely. Less likely analyses can be ignored by the procedures that interpret the utterance. In assigning categories and writing the rule statements and procedures for DIAGRAM, decisions were guided by consideration of the functions that phrases serve in communication as well as by considerations of efficiency in relating syntactic analyses to propositional content. The major decisions are explained and illustrated with examples of the rules and the analyses they provide. Some contrasts with transformational grammars are pointed out and problems that motivate a plan to use redundancy rules in the future are discussed. (Redundancy rules are meta-rules that derive new constituent-structure rules from a set of base rules, thereby achieving generality of syntactic statement without having to perform transformations on syntactic analyses.) Other extensions of both grammar and formalism are projected in the concluding section. Appendices provide details and samples of the lexicon, the rule statements, and the procedures, as well as analyses for several sentences that differ in type and structure.\\ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------\\ TECHNICAL NOTE: 206\hfill PRICE: \$14.00\\[0.01in] \noindent TITLE: THE INTERPRETATION OF VERB PHRASES IN DIALOGS\\ AUTHOR: ANN E. ROBINSON\\ DATE: JANUARY 1980\\[0.01in] ABSTRACT: This paper discusses two problems central to the interpretation of utterances: determining the relationship between actions described in an utterance and events in the world, and inferring the state of the world'' from utterances. Knowledge of the language, knowledge about the general subject being discussed, and knowledge about the current situation are all necessary for this. The problem of determining an action referred toby a verb phrase is analogous to the problem of determining the object referred to by a noun phrase. This paper presents an approach to the problems of verb phrases resolution in which knowledge about language, the problem domain, and the dialog itself is combined to interpret such references. Presented and discussed are the kinds of knowledge necessary for interpreting references to actions, as well as algorithms for using that knowledge in interpreting dialog utterances about ongoing tasks and for drawing inferences about the task situation that are based on a given interpretation.\\ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------