Inferential memory as the basis of machines which understand natural language
Computers & thought
A grammar base question-answering procedure
Communications of the ACM
The use of theorem-proving techniques in question-answering systems
ACM '68 Proceedings of the 1968 23rd ACM national conference
A computer program which "understands"
AFIPS '64 (Fall, part I) Proceedings of the October 27-29, 1964, fall joint computer conference, part I
DEACON: direct English access and control
AFIPS '66 (Fall) Proceedings of the November 7-10, 1966, fall joint computer conference
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This paper describes a system for "remembering" a story or passage in English and for the subsequent retrieval of responses to questions. Although it functions as an information retrieval system, it is also intended as a model for long-term human memory. Information is stored in the form of predicates and propertylists. In translating from natural language, the system carries out a transformational analysis of each sentence and identifies its deep structure interpretation. This grammatical analysisis essential to the identification of the predicates as well as relationships among them. The first two subsystems carry out the grammatical analysis. A third identifies the predicates and propertylists, determines a time and priority structure, forms a logical map of relationships among predicates, and eliminates some predicates based on an assignment of priority. The fourth subsystem is used to answer inquiries about the stored information. The method is illustrated with references to one story that has been processed and with examples of questions that might be asked.