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<Paper uid="C90-3064">
  <Title>A message processing system with object-centered semantics</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3. Syntactic analysis
3.1, The ~ma;~:t~r
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Syntactic analysis is peribrmed by an augmented I)CG grauu',~ar. The output is a list of doublets &lt;p,v&gt;, where p is either a preposition or a syntactic category, apd v the lcxical-semantic translation of the item(s), The \[risk of the analyzer is not domain-neutral and t'(:t purely grammatical : - d~e &amp;quot;p&amp;quot; clement of the doublets is in fact filtered and sometimes transformed : prepositions which trar~slate identically end up the same (but inversely, ambiguities caused Ey plurivocal prepositions arc left for the sc~:i:antic processor to solve, mainly by the use of domain filtering); a lot of lexicon entries are complex nouns and vet-bai phrases A clause is represented in the output under the form : &lt;ap, x-np,&gt;.&lt;vp, x-vp&gt;.&lt;x-prepl , Xl&gt; .....</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> 'QX - p1'cPIl, Xll&gt;.ll\[l 3.2. IVhat is ~ted frorn s~jntact~a kncxvledge? There have been deeply contrasted positions on the role of syntax. It can be thought of as a full-fledged first stage, as an auxiliary which is sufficiently informative even when a complete syntactic structure per se (e.g. an x-barred tree) is not built (conceptual analysis : \[Schank &amp; Riesbeck 81\]), as a co-process in close cooperation with semantics (since SHRDLU), as the first in an ordered sequence of increasingly costly means (as suggested by \[Rau &amp; Jacobs 87\], who then list slot-filling involving filtering, heuristics when choices are to be made, and general domain knowledge).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Grossly, syntax in itself carries information on : - constituent ordering and constituent relationship -flexion and syntactic function (if the grammar is relational).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> 13ut more actively, syntactic analysis backed by lexical semantics, even if less sophisticated than in LFG or Mel'cuk's model for example, can play an active part in sorting items out and ascribing them an adequate translation, as for prepositions with an identical meaning. In fact, besides applying weilformedness rules, the analyzer and lexicon can do some rearrangements so as to have the job all prepared for case attribution to function nicely.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4. Semantic processing
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The system first searches a clause for an action in the verb doublet or, if the verb has translated as &amp;quot;empty&amp;quot; (for verbs like &amp;quot;perform&amp;quot;, conduct&amp;quot;), in the tbllowing noun phrase. The field valuation mechanism of the object environment checks that the action value does belong to the declared domain. An instance of the action type is created, and the system fills its fields with the values it finds in the second element of the doublets; the condition on the first place \[preposition) is expressed as a parameter. Domain checking is again performed. A case-like structure is obtained.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> When tile action instance has completed the valuation of its fields, it pours itself into an existing active task of the same ship if available, or else into a new task it creates. Temporary data {current  direction, destination, speed, company and goal) are replaced without testing if the new values are different. If the new action is an activity rather than a movement, it will either merge into the last recorded task If it is the same or a compatible one, or will generate a new task, If it is declared to be completed, it is (re-)written into the completed-tasks field after its status flag has been set to &amp;quot;Inactive&amp;quot;. If it is incompatible with an existing ongoing task, that task is closed For all of the above, a new modality for an already valuated field will be checked against the existing modality : a &amp;quot;better&amp;quot; modality (e.g. certain vs probable} supersedes the previous one, whereas a worse one is anomalous and can be signalled. The processing of the above example thus results in the crcaetion/updating of the following frames : Output lists : (&lt;np,I.a-Belle-Pmfle&gt;.&lt;vp,empty&gt;.&lt;oceanographical met~smement&gt;. &lt;in,northern-Mediterraaean&gt;).</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5. Related work
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The principled application of structured object representation to semantic processing had its operational landmarks in Bobrow and Winograd's KPd, and the systems developed by the Yale AI group (e.g. \[Schank &amp; Riesbeck 811\]. \[Itirst 87\] proposes an overaU application of the object paradigrn, including to syntax, rather in the spirit of {Srnall &amp; Rieger 82\]'s and (Flnck 89\]'s word experts. \[Fargues, Catach, I)ugourd 86\] use logic grammars, but with a semantic representation based on networks \[Sowa's conceptual graphs) rather than fi'ames.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
6. Implementation
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The system is implemented in Objlog (\[Dugerdil 89\]), a frame language based on Prolog II and featuring multiple inheritance with points of view, selective inheritance for value-sharing in relationships other than taxonomical, and dynamic facets. The grammar Itself is written in Prolog It. A menu-andmouse interface has been developed for the IntexTogation module.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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