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Natural-Language Interfaces

Natural-Language Interfaces Since the early 1960s when support decreased for machine translation, much of the research on natural-language processing (NLP) in North America has been motivated by its potential use for communicating with software systems. l Natural-language systems have been developed to extract informa­ tion from databases, to control (simulated) robots (Winograd 1972), to in­ teract with graphic systems (Brachman et al 1979), to specify simulation problems (Heidorn 1976), and to communicate with systems embodying expertise in some task or problem area (Bobrow et al 1977; A. Robinson 1981) . In this article we focus on interfaces to database management systems (DBMS). 2 We use the term natural-language interface (or NU) to refer to such interfaces , unless otherwise specified. In addition to being among the earliest interface systems developed, interfaces to databases account for most of the NUs implemented to date and they are the subject of a substantial literature. Although some work has been done on the use of natural language to update databases (Davidson & Kaplan 1983) and on generating appropriate responses , most of the work on NUs has been concerned with interpreting queries , and we will restrict ourselves to this problem area. Besides discussing http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Annual Review of Computer Science Annual Reviews

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References (82)

Publisher
Annual Reviews
Copyright
Copyright 1986 Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
Subject
Review Articles
ISSN
8756-7016
DOI
10.1146/annurev.cs.01.060186.000403
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Since the early 1960s when support decreased for machine translation, much of the research on natural-language processing (NLP) in North America has been motivated by its potential use for communicating with software systems. l Natural-language systems have been developed to extract informa­ tion from databases, to control (simulated) robots (Winograd 1972), to in­ teract with graphic systems (Brachman et al 1979), to specify simulation problems (Heidorn 1976), and to communicate with systems embodying expertise in some task or problem area (Bobrow et al 1977; A. Robinson 1981) . In this article we focus on interfaces to database management systems (DBMS). 2 We use the term natural-language interface (or NU) to refer to such interfaces , unless otherwise specified. In addition to being among the earliest interface systems developed, interfaces to databases account for most of the NUs implemented to date and they are the subject of a substantial literature. Although some work has been done on the use of natural language to update databases (Davidson & Kaplan 1983) and on generating appropriate responses , most of the work on NUs has been concerned with interpreting queries , and we will restrict ourselves to this problem area. Besides discussing

Journal

Annual Review of Computer ScienceAnnual Reviews

Published: Jun 1, 1986

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