tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "TRANSPORTABLE NATURAL-LANGUAGE INTERFACES TO DATABASES"

Over the last few years a number of application systems have been constructed that who has had special training in computational l i n g u i s t i c s and the use of databases. Thus, the utility of these systems is severely limited by the high cost involved in developing an interface to any particular database. | TRANSPORTABLE NATURAL-LANGUAGE INTERFACES TO DATABASES by Gary G. Hendrix and William H. Lewis SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park California 94025 I INTRODUCTION Mechanisms must be developed to enable the system to acquire Information about a particular application from nonllnguists. Over the last few years a number of application systems have been constructed that allow users to access databases by posing questions In natural languages such as English. When used in the restricted domains for which they have been especially designed these systems have achieved reasonably high levels of performance. Such systems as LADDER 2 PLANES 10 ROBOT 1 and REL 9 require the encoding of knowledge about the domain of application In such constructs as database schemata lexicons pragmatic grammars and the like. The creation of these data structures typically requires considerable effort on the part of a computer professional who has had special training In computational linguistics and the use of databases. Thus the utility of these systems Is severely limited by the high cost Involved in developing an interface to any particular database. This paper describes Initial work on a methodology for creating natural-language processing capabilities for new domains without the need for Intervention by specially trained experts. Our approach Is to acquire logical schemata and lexical Information through simple Interactive dialogues with someone who is familiar with the form and content of the database but unfamiliar with the technology of natural-language interfaces. To test our approach in an actual computer environment we have developed a prototype system called TED Transportable English Datamanager . As a result of our experience with TED the NL group at SRI is now undertaking the development of a much more ambitious system based on the same philosophy t l. II RESEARCH PROBLEMS Given the demonstrated feasibility of language-access systems such as LADDER major research .