dailey@frith.uucp (Chris Dailey) (01/31/91)
I'm not an AI person (I'm just an undergrad studying compilers), and I have a couple of ideas regarding conversation in natural languages. I wanted to ask if anyone here knew of any work done in this area. The only thing even close to what I'm thinking of is the ancient ELIZA-type programs. Some of the more complex adventure games may also come close to what I'm thinking of, but probably not. I guess what I'm wondering about is what is being done on getting a computer to follow a logical conversation, whether that be in the user querying the computer or the computer querying the user. I just checked our library computer here at MSU (and UofM's, too) WRT Conversations, and this is what it said: Studies in the organization of conversational interaction / edited by Jim Schenkein. -- New York : Academic Press, c1978. xvi, 275 p. ; 24 cm. -- (Language, thought, and culture) Bibliography: p. 271-275. SUBJECT HEADINGS (Library of Congress; use s= ): Interpersonal communication. Conversation--Research. I have not yet been able to check this out, but I would suspect it would have little to do with computer application. There was nothing under ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE that seemed what I was looking for, either. I guess what I'm interested in is stream of consciousness. If you can give me a simplified description of a theory or concept, that would be great -- pointers to sources of information would be acceptable, also. I have redirected follow-ups to myself, and if people request, I will summarize. Thanks, -- Chris Dailey dailey@(frith.egr|cps).msu.edu __ __ ___ | "A line in the sand." -- The Detroit News __/ \/ \/ __:>- | \__/\__/\__/ | "Allein in der sand." -- me
andrew@calvin.doc.ca (Andrew Patrick) (02/02/91)
In article <1991Jan30.164108.24633@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> dailey@frith.uucp (Chris Dailey) writes: >I'm not an AI person (I'm just an undergrad studying compilers), and I >have a couple of ideas regarding conversation in natural languages. > >I wanted to ask if anyone here knew of any work done in this area. The >only thing even close to what I'm thinking of is the ancient ELIZA-type >programs. Some of the more complex adventure games may also come close >to what I'm thinking of, but probably not. ... We have published a couple of papers on this topic recently: Whalen, T. E., & Patrick, A. S. (1990). COMODA: A conversation model for database access. Behaviour & Information Technology, 9, 93-110. Whalen, T.E, & Patrick, A.S. (1989). Conversational hypertext: Information access through natural language dialogues with computers. Paper presented at the SIGCHI Conference, April 30 - May 4, 1989, Austin Texas. Published in CHI '89 Conference Proceedings, 289-292. We also have some unpublished papers you may be interested in -- drop me a note with a postal address. BTW, my news software (the latest C-News and NNTP) coughs with follow-ups directed to an e-mail address -- it complains that there are not newsgroups matching foo@bar.domain in the active file (which makes sense). Is this practice of directing followups to an e-mail address common? -- Andrew Patrick, Ph.D. Department of Communications, Ottawa, CANADA andrew@calvin.doc.CA "The interface IS the program."