Accession Number:

AD0672782

Title:

A COMPUTATIONAL MODEL OF VERBAL UNDERSTANDING

Descriptive Note:

Corporate Author:

SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT CORP SANTA MONICA CA

Personal Author(s):

• Simmons, Robert F.
• Schwarcz, Robert M.
• Burger, John F.

Report Date:

1968-04-30

Pagination or Media Count:

55.0

Abstract:

This paper presents a theory of verbal understanding based on a formal model of conceptual structures that represent verbal meanings expressed in English sentences. Verbal understanding is defined as the capability for disambiguation, paraphrase, question answering, translation, etc., with regard to natural language sentences. The model has been implemented as Protosynthex 3 in LISP on the Q-32 time-shared system. Experimental results from the system include examples of the analysis of complex sentences, disambiguation of multisensed words via sentence context, question answering via logical inference, and meaning-preserving paraphrase generation. The authors conclude that sophisticated natural language processing by computers is a realistic goal that has been partly achieved.

Descriptors:

• *COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
• MATHEMATICAL MODELS
• COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
• SEMANTICS
• SYNTAX
• ENGLISH LANGUAGE
• PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMARS
• VOICE COMMUNICATIONS
• VOCABULARY
• TIME SHARING
• ANALOG SYSTEMS

Subject Categories:

• Linguistics
• Computer Programming and Software
• Computer Systems

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE