Beyond domain-independence: experience with the development of a German language access system to highly diverse background systems

  • Authors:

  • Wolfgang Hoeppner;Thomas Christaller;Heinz Marburger;Katharina Morik;Bernhard Nebel;Mike O'Leary;Wolfgang Wahlster

  • Affiliations:

  • Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany;Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany;Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany;Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany;Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany;Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany;Research Unit for Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, F.R. Germany

  • Venue:
  • IJCAI'83 Proceedings of the Eighth international joint conference on Artificial intelligence - Volume 1
  • Year:
  • 1983

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Abstract

For natural language dialog systems, going beyond domain independence means the attempt to create a core system that can serve as a basis for interfaces to various application classes that differ not only with respect to the domain of discourse but also with respect to dialog type, user type, intended system behavior, and background system. In the design and implementation of HAM ANS. which is presently operational as an interface to an expert system, a vision system and a data base system, we have shown that going beyond domain independence is possible. HAM-ANS is a large natural language dialog system with both considerable depth and breadth, which accepts typed input in colloquial German and produces typed German responses quickly enough to make it practical for real-time interaction. One goal of this paper is to report on the lessons learned during the realization of the system HAM-ANS. This paper introduces the overall structure of the system's processing units and knowledge sources. In addition we describe some of the innovative features concerning the strategy of semantic interpretation.