Computational Model of Natural Language Communication Interpretation, Inference, And Production in Database Semantics

Summary: A computational model of natural language communication can be used for man-machine communication. The author presents a theory of language communication, Database Semantics, where natural communication is considered a transfer of content from the speaker's database into the hearer's database using natural language signs. Database Semantics models natural language communication by automatically reading propositional ...content into an agent's database and reading content out of that database, resulting in action. The basic framework can be applied to different natural languages using the same software machine.Part I of this book describes the general framework by defining the interfaces and components of a talking robot. The components are the lexicon, the morphology (automatic word form recognition and production), the syntactic-semantic (hearer-mode) and semantic-syntactic (speaker-mode) grammars, and the pragmatics of traditional linguistics. Part II presents the major constructions of natural language, i.e., intra- and extra-propositional functor-argument structure, coordination, and coreference. Part III defines declarative specifications for fragments of English, which are used for the implementation of the system in Java. Finally, the reader is supported with appendices and a glossary.The book is aimed at researchers, graduate students and software engineers engaged with linguistics and natural language processing. [read more]