This paper provides an overview of a research program just being defined at Bellcore. The objective is to develop facilities for working with large document collections that provide more refined access to the information contained in these "source" materials than is possible through current information retrieval procedures. The tools being used for this purpose are machine-readable dictionaries, encyclopedias, and related "resources" that provide geographical, biographical, and other kinds of specialized knowledge. A major feature of the research program is the exploitation of the reciprocal relationships between sources and resources. These interactions between texts and tools are intended to support experts who organize and use information in a workstation environment. Two systems under development will be described to illustrate the approach: one providing capabilities for full-text subject assessment; the other for concept elaboration while reading text. Progress in the research depends critically on developments in artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and information science to provide a scientific base, and on software engineering, database management, and distributed systems to provide the technology.

The papers in this panel consider machine-readable dictionaries from several perspectives: research in computational linguistics and computational lexicology, the development of tools for improving accessibility, the design of lexical reference systems for educational purposes, and applications of machine-readable dictionaries in information science contexts. As background and by way of introduction, a description is provided of a workshop on machine-readable dictionaries that was held at SRI International in April 1983.

(3) Classlflcation--identify the t e x t as similar to and different from other texts in relation to a see of predetermined categories; this operation establishes the position of the text In.some more general fr~unework. (4) Modlfication--~hange the wording of some p a r t of the text; thls operation corresponds to Note that generation, the creation of the text itself, i s presumed f o r this d i s c u s s i o n , and that translaclon of a ~exC turn another language ls also nor i nc l uded . the casks o f r e w r i t i n g p a r t s o f the t e x t as w e l l as making c o r r e c t i o n s ; i t begs the quasClon o f when the m o d i f i c a t i o n i s s u f f i c i e n t l y l a r g e to r e s u l t in c o n s i d e r i n g the t e x t to be new. (5) C o n v e r s i o Q C r a n s f o r ~ c o n t e n t e l e m e n t s from the t e x t i n t o some o t h e r n o n t e x t u a l o r a t l e a s t n o n s e q u e n t i a l s t r u c t u r e ; i n t h i s o p e r a t i o n i n f o r m a t i o n i s e x t r a c t e d from the t e x t and r e o r g a n i z e d a c c o r d i n 8 to e x t e r n a l l y d e t e r m i n e d c r i t e r i a . (6 ) D i f f e r e n t i a t i o n l o c a t e p a r t i c u l a r c o n s t i t uen ts t r t ch /n a t e x t ; t h i s o p e r a t i o n f i n d s chose elements Chat who l ly o r p a r t i a l l y march a g i v e n s p e c i f l e a C£on. I t shou ld be c l e a r , on r e f l e c t i o n , t h a t these o p e r a t i o n s o v e r l a p i n complex ways; some presume o t h e r s ; moreover , t h e i r e f f a c e s ere s t r o n g l y c o n t e x t dependen t , r e f l e c t i n g the pu rpose and the p a r t i c u l a r f ramework f o r the a n a l y s i s . While I make no s a r o n g c l a i m s f o r t h e i r u t i l i t y , I b e l i e v e cha t i t i s i m p o r t a n t f o r the f i e l d to d i s t i n g u i s h the d i f f e r e n t k inds of t h i n g s t h a t peop le want to do w i t h t e x t s . The s i x p a p e r s i n c l u d e d in the s e s s i o n s on t e x t a n a l y s i s aC t h i s con fe rence i l l u s t r a t e the beginnings of a technology that will allow us to a d d r e s s some of the u n d e r l y i n g i s s u e s . Three of them dea l wlth the problem of conversion; specifically, they show how information can be extracted from a text and formatted for storage ~n a d a t a b a s e . In " S p e c i a l i z e d i n f o r m a t i o n e x t r a c t i o n : auComaClc chemica l reaction coding from English descriptions," Larry H. Reeker, Elaine M. Zamora, and Paul E. Blower presen t a system t ha t e x t r a c t s information on chemica l reactions from the experimental sections of papers in specialized chemistry Journals, converting l~ Into a format that chemists use to identify that kind of data. James R. Cowle, in his paper "Automatic analysis of descriptive texts," describes a system for interpreting texts that contain stylized descriptions, like t h o s e in c a t a l o g u e s and directories. He shows how examples from a field guide Co wild flowers can be processed to Identify attributes characteristic of plants, which are then sco red i n a canonical form.

This paper discusses the problem of providing natural language access to textual material. We are developing a system that relates a request in English to specific passages in a document on the basis of correspondences between the logical representations of the information in the request and in the passages. In addition, we are developing procedures for automatically generating logical representations of text passages, directly from the text, by means of an analysis of the coherence structure of the passages.

This paper describes a program of research whose objectives are to (1) develop systems that provide users with access to both data and text files through natural language dialogues; (2) study how people actually use the information to test hypotheses and solve problems; (3) modify the system designs on the basis of the results of the studies so that the systems more effectively support such uses and increasingly come to model the behavior of the users. Two of the systems are in the medical domain: the first provides physicians with formatted information derived from patient medical records; the second responds to requests by eliciting relevant passages from a medical monograph. The third system is a more general information retrieval facility that will support interactions among system users and enable their successive experiences to be accumulated within the system database.

Article Free Access Share on Reflections on 20 years of the ACL: an introduction Author: Donald E. Walker SRI International, Menlo Park, California SRI International, Menlo Park, CaliforniaView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACL '82: Proceedings of the 20th annual meeting on Association for Computational LinguisticsJune 1982 Pages 89–91https://doi.org/10.3115/981251.981273Online:16 June 1982Publication History 0citation168DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads168Last 12 Months61Last 6 weeks1 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

Journal of the American Society for Information ScienceVolume 32, Issue 5 p. 347-363 Article The organization and use of information: Contributions of information science, computational linguistics and artificial intelligence Donald E. Walker, Donald E. Walker Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025Search for more papers by this author Donald E. Walker, Donald E. Walker Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025Search for more papers by this author First published: September 1981 https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630320516Citations: 21AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume32, Issue5September 1981Pages 347-363 RelatedInformation

Publisher SummaryThis chapter presents the understanding of spoken language. As speech is the most natural form of communication, using spoken language to access computers has become an important research goal. There are several specific advantages to speech as an input medium. With speech as the means of accessing the computer, even casual users need relatively little training before interacting with a complex system. Current experimental systems to understand connected speech is viewed in terms of a bottom end and a top end. The task of the bottom end in such a system is to use knowledge about the variable phonetic composition of the words in the vocabulary to interpret pieces of the speech signal by comparing the signal with prestored patterns. The top end aids in recognition by building expectations about which words the speaker is likely to say, applying syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic constraints. Network representations for phonetic knowledge were developed, including SDC's spelling graphs, HEARSAY'S pronunciation graphs, HWIM's segmented lattices, and HARPY's integrated network.

This paper describes the procedures for integrating knowledge from different sources in the SRI speech understanding system. A language definition system coordinates - at the phrase level --information from syntax, semantics and discourse in the course of the interpretation of an utterance. The system executive uses these contextual constraints in assigning priorities to alternative interpretations, combining top-down, bottom-up, and bidirectional strategies as required Experimental results that demonstrate the effectiveness of context checking are discussed.

This panel will review research in speech understanding (SU) and in artificial intelligence (AI) from two perspectives: the contributions that AI has made to SU -- the? resources in AI that have been used in the development of SU systems. the contributions that SU has made to AI - the results of the SU program that have affected or arc likely to affect futuie AI research. Four topics are identified for major consideration: Multiple sources of Knowledge which are required; how should they be oiganized, System control how to manage the complex inter actions involved. language understanding comparisons of text and speech input. Organization of research -creating complex, multisource, knowledge-based systems.