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<Paper uid="A83-1012">
  <Title>Hendrix, G. G., Sacerdoti, E. D., Sagalowicz, D., and Slocum, J., '*Developing a Natural Language Interface to Complex Data.&amp;quot; Association for Computing Machinery Transactions on Database</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="73" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
USE OF CONCEPTUAL DEPENDENCY
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> APE-If utilizes Conceptual Dependency theory \[Schank, 1972\] to represent the meaning of questions. Once the meaning of a question has been found, the question is answered by a rule based system whose teats are CD patterns and whose actions execute database queries.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> We feel it is important to represent the meaning in this manner for several reasons. First, the canonical meaning representation enables questions which have different surface expressions, but the same meanins, to be answered by the same mechanikm. This is not only of theoretical sisnificance, but is also a practical matter as it requires less effort to produce a robust system.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Because people do not always say precisely what they mean, inferences may be required to explicate missing information. This inference process can also utilize the canonical meaning representation. Finally, finding the referent Qf a nominal which is modified by a relative clause is, in some cases, similar to question answering although the syntactic constructions used differ.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> As a result of this similarity, the question answering productions can also be used for determining the referents of a relative clause.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The conversation with KNOBS (whose database is fictional) in Fig. 1 illustrates these points.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> The first question is represented in the same manner as &amp;quot;Does Ramstein have F-4G's?&amp;quot; and would be answered by the same rule. The second question,  USER: Are there F-4G's at Ramatein? KNOBS: RAMSTEIN has F-4Ga.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> USER: Can its fighters reach the target? KNOBS: F-15e can reach SE50301 from RA~SIEIN.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7">  F-4Ge and F-dCa can not reach BEb0301 from RA~STEIN. USER: Which SCL which are carried by an F-dC contain ECM? KNOBS: Sl, S7 and BB.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> F~guve i. A Question Answering Interchange withi, KN08S.  after resolving the pronominal reference, requires an inference to find the location from which the F-4G's will be leaving. This inference states that if the source of the object of a physical transfer is missing, then the source could be the initial location of the object. The third question can be thought of as two questions: &amp;quot;Which SCL (Standard Configuration Load - a predefined weapons package) are carried by an F-dC?&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Which of those contain ECM (Electronic Counter Measures - radar jamming equipment)?&amp;quot;. The first part requires a script based inference: In order for an SCL to be carried by an aircraft, the aircraft must be capable of having the SCL as a part. After the first part is answered as a question, the second part is answered as a second question to discover which contain ECM.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> The system of representation used for nominals (or picture producers) differs from that normally present in a CD system. Typically, an object such as an F-4C would be represented as a picture producer with a TYPE case filled by VEHICLE, a SUBTYPE case filled by aircraft, and, perhaps, a MODEL case filled by F-4C. In KNOBS, the meaning representation produced by the parser is F-dC, the name of a frame. The set membership of this frame is indicated by links to other frames. F-dC is a kind of FIGHTER which is a kind of AIRPLANE which is an AIRCR~T which is a VEHICLE which is a PICTURE PRODUCER. We feel that representing nominals in this manner allows a finer degree of discrimination than explicitly labeled cases to denote a conceptual hierarchy.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Many of the attributes of objects in the database (which are stored as value facets of slots in FRL) are represented as kinds of RELATIONS in the KNOBS system. For example, the representation of &amp;quot;Hahn's Latitude&amp;quot; is (LATITUDE ARGUMENT (HAHN)). Note, however, chat the representation of &amp;quot;Hahn's aircraft&amp;quot; is (AIRCRAFT LOC (AT PLACE (HAHN))).</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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