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<Paper uid="P82-1035">
  <Title>Scruffy Text Understanding: Design and Implementation of 'Tolerant' Understanders</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2. INPUT:
MIDWAY SIGHTED ENEMY. FIRED.
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Problem: Missing subject and objects. &amp;quot;Fired&amp;quot; builds a PROPEL, and expects a subject and objects to play the conceptual roles of ACTOR (who did the PROPELing), OBJECT (what got PROPELed) and RECIPI-ENT (who got PROPELed at). However, no surface subjects or objects are presented here.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Solution: Use expectations to fill in conceptual cases. NOMAD uses situational expectations from the known typical sequence of events in an &amp;quot;ATTACK&amp;quot; (which consists of a movement (PTRANS), a sighting (ATTEND) and firing (PROPEL)). Those expectations say (among other things) that the actor and recipient of the PROPEL will be the same as the actor and direction of the ATTEND, and that the OBJECT that got PROPELed will be some kind of projectile, which is not further specified here.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
NOMAD OUTPUT:
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We sighted an enemy ship. We fired at the ship.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3. INPUT:
LOCKED ON OPENED FIRE.
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Problem: Missing sentence boundaries. NOMAD has no expectations for a new verb (&amp;quot;opened&amp;quot;) to appear immediately after the completed clause &amp;quot;locked on&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> It tries but fails to connect &amp;quot;opened&amp;quot; to the phrase &amp;quot;locked on&amp;quot;.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Solution: Assume the syntactic expectations failed because a clause boundary was not adequately marked in the message; assume such a boundary is there.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> NOMAD assumes that there may have been an intended sentence separation before &amp;quot;opened&amp;quot;, since no expectations can account for the word in this sentence position. Hence, NOMAD saves &amp;quot;locked on&amp;quot; as one sentence, and continues to process the rest of the text as a new sentence.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
NOMAD OUTPUT:
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We aimed at an unknown object.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> object.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> We fired at the</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="8" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4. INPUT:
LOST CONTACT ON ENEMY SHIP.
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Problem: Missing event in event sequence. NOMAD&amp;quot;s knowledge of the &amp;quot;Tracking&amp;quot; situation cannot understand a ship losing contact until some contact has been gained.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Solution: Use situational expectations to infer missing events. NOMAD assumes that the message implies the previous event of gaining contact with the enemy ship, based on the known sequence of events in the &amp;quot;Tracking&amp;quot; situation.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="9" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
NOMAD OUTPUT:
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We sighted an enemy ship. Then we lost radar visual contact with the ship.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> or</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="10" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5. INPUT:
RETURNED BOMBS TO ENEMY SHIP.
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Prob!em: Ambiguous interpretation of action.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> NOMAD cannot tell whether the action here is &amp;quot;returning&amp;quot; fire to the enemy, i.e., firing back at them (after they presumably had fired at us), or peaceably delivering bombs, with no firing implied.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Solution: Use expectations of probable goals of actors. NOMAD first interprets the sentence as &amp;quot;peaceably delivering&amp;quot; some bombs to the ship. However, NOMAD contains the knowledge that enemies do not give weapons, information, personnel, etc., to each other. Hence it attempts to find an alternative interpretation of the sentence, in this case finding the &amp;quot;returned fire&amp;quot; interpretation, which does not violate any of NOMAD's knowledge about goals. It then infers, as in the above example, that the enemy ship must have previously fired on us.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="11" start_page="158" end_page="158" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
NOMAD OUTPUT:
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> An unknown enemy ship fired on us.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> bombs at them.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Then we fired</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>