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<Paper uid="A83-1017">
  <Title>Scruffy Text Understanding: Design and Implementation of the NOMAD System</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="104" end_page="104" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
CONTACT GAINED ON KASHIN.
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The example can be interpreted as either &amp;quot;Contact was gained on Kashin&amp;quot; meanin K '~e contacted Kashin&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Our contact (e ship) made heading towards Kashin.&amp;quot; NOMAD picks one of the multiple maaninEs of the ~i&amp;uous word, and calls a blame assignzenC module to check for goal violations, physical impossibilities, and other semantic conflicts to make sure that the interpretation was correct. If the module detects any conflict, NOMAD attempts Co understand the sentence using a a different meaning of the ambiguous word.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> D. Missing sentence and c~ause boundaTies Consider the following message,</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="104" end_page="105" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
VISUALLY LOCKED ON AND TRACKING CHALLENGED UNIT NO
REI~LT OPEN FIRED TIME 0129.1
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> NOMAD uses semantic expectations end syntactic expectations to detect missing boundaries.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> &amp;quot;VISUALLY LOCKED ON&amp;quot; is understood Co be * complete sentence because there are no expecacione pending when &amp;quot;AND&amp;quot; is read. &amp;quot;TRACKinK&amp;quot; is understood co be the verb of the second sentence. With a verb chosen and expecations for an actor pending, degCRALLZNCED&amp;quot; is used as an adverb describing &amp;quot;UNIT'. The second phrase ends before &amp;quot;NO REPLY ...&amp;quot; as again there ere no expecacions pending aC chin point. The phrase &amp;quot;NO REPLY&amp;quot; has expectations for communication verbs to follow it, and thus when the clause &amp;quot;OPEN FIRED&amp;quot; is encountered, the final sentence boundr 7 is identified.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> E. WTonK tense Consider the following fragment sentence from our first example, OPEN FIRED.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The ~orphological analyzer is used also to correct the tense of a word. eg. OPEN FIRED --&gt; OPEN FIRE. The script-based inferencer then determines the tense of the given action using its knowledge about typical sequences of events, eg. LOCKED ON.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> OPEN FIRED. --&gt; LOCKED ON. OPENED FIRE.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> III. Human Interface NOMAD uses a generator specifically designed for the naval domain co produce a yell formed translation of the input message. This &amp;quot;pretty&amp;quot; form of the input message is checked by a user to  assure chaC NOMAD has correctly understood the message. If NOMAD is then told it has incorrectly understood the message, alternative word definitions and ocher semantic choices are made in a second attempt at understanding.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> A. rhe99naraCgr The generator has been tailored to address some of the problems that occur in describing naval activities \[Taylor, 1982\]. Many of the messages are characterized by incomplete end changing descriptions of actors. These descriptions contain information Chat may be unknown but doesn't change (name, type of ship, etc.) along with temporal information (location and damage status). The NOMAD generator produces unambiguous descriptions of actors while uaincaining brevity.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> ZV. an Example The following is an actual example showing the cnpabiliCy of NOMAD to handle multiple problems found ~ a message.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8">  that van at 225 degrees 2000 miles from their location. A helicopter-squadron pursued the enemy submarine. The helicopter-squadron identified some green flares. By using an active sonar, the helicopter-squadron identified the enemy submarine, and they fired twice at the enemy submarine.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> PARAPHRASE2: The Constellation identified an enemy submarine that was at 225 degrees 2000 miles from their location. A helicopter-squadron pursued the enemy submarine. The Constellation identified some green flares. By using an active sonar, the helicopter-squadron identified the enemy submarine, and they fired twice at the enemy submarine.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> The ,.-in difference chat is shown in the paraphrases is the identity of the subject of the second sentence. NOMAD gives preference in this case to the second paraphrase because &amp;quot;AFTER VISUAL ON PEEISCOPE&amp;quot; implies that the subject of the second sentence is the same as in the first sentence. However, the user is given the final choice.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> V. Conclueions The ability to understand text is dependent on the ability to understand what is being described in the text. ~ence, a reader of, say, English text must have applicable knowledge of both the situations chat may be described in texts (e.g., actions, scares, sequences of events, goals, methods of achieving goals, etc.) and the the surface structures that appear in the language, i.e., the relations between the surface order of appearance of words and phrases, and their corresponding meaning structures.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> The process of text understanding is the combined application of these knowledge sources as a reader proceeds through a text. This fact becomes clearest when we investigate the understanding of texts that present particular problems to a reader. Human understanding is inherently tolerant; people are naturally able to ignore mtny types of error|, omissions, poor constructions, etc., and get straight to the meaning of the text.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> Our theories have tried to take this ability into account by including knowledge and mechanisms of error noticing and correcting as implicit parts of our process models of language understanding. The NOMAD system is the latest in a line of &amp;quot;tolerant* language understanders, beginning with FOUL-UP, all based on the use of knowledge of syntax, semantics and pragmatics at all stages of the understanding process to cope with errors.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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