3,380 research outputs found
ATMS-Based architecture for stylistics-aware text generation
This thesis is concerned with the effect of surface stylistic constraints (SSC) on syntactic
and lexical choice within a unified generation architecture. Despite the fact that these
issues have been investigated by researchers in the field, little work has been done with
regard to system architectures that allow surface form constraints to influence earlier
linguistic or even semantic decisions made throughout the NLG process. By SSC we
mean those stylistic requirements that are known beforehand but cannot be tested
until after the utterance or — in some lucky cases — until a proper linearised part
of it has been generated. These include collocational constraints, text size limits, and
poetic aspects such as rhyme and metre to name a few.
This thesis introduces a new NLG architecture that can be sensitive to surface stylistic
requirements. It brings together a well-founded linguistic theory that has been used
in many successful NLG systems (Systemic Functional Linguistics, SFL) and an exist¬
ing AI search mechanism (the Assumption-based Truth Maintenance System, ATMS)
which caches important search information and avoids work duplication.
To this end, the thesis explores the logical relation between the grammar formalism and
the search technique. It designs, based on that logical connection, an algorithm for the
automatic translation of systemic grammar networks to ATMS dependency networks.
The generator then uses the translated networks to generate natural language texts
with a high paraphrasing power as a direct result of its ability to pursue multiple paths
simultaneously. The thesis approaches the crucial notion of choice differently to previ¬
ous systems using SFL. It relaxes the choice process in that choosers are not obliged to
deterministically choose a single alternative allowing SSC to influence the final lexical
and syntactic decisions. The thesis also develops a situation-action framework for the
specification of stylistic requirements independently of the micro-semantic input. The
user or application can state what surface requirements they wish to impose and the
ATMS-based generator then attempts to satisfy these constraints.
Finally, a prototype ATMS-based generation system embodying the ideas presented in
this thesis is implemented and evaluated. We examine the system's stylistic sensitivity
by testing it on three different sets of stylistic requirements, namely: collocational,
size, and poetic constraints
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Towards a Theory of Practice: Critical Transdisciplinary Multiliteracies
About the book: Education institutions and organizations throughout the world are currently being held accountable for achieving and maintaining historically unmatched standards of academic quality and performance. Accreditation bodies; policy makers; boards of trustees; and teacher, parent, and student groups all place educational institutions and organizations under unprecedented accountability pressures. The aim of this volume is to explore and better understand how these pressures are impacting a broad range of social and cultural issues and, subsequently, how these issues impact student motivation and learnin
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Planning multisentential English text using communicative acts
The goal of this research is to develop explanation presentation mechanisms for knowledge based
systems which enable them to define domain terminology and concepts, narrate events, elucidate plans,
processes, or propositions and argue to support a claim or advocate action. This requires the development
of devices which select, structure, order and then linguistically realize explanation content as coherent and
cohesive English text.
With the goal of identifying generic explanation presentation strategies, a wide range of naturally
occurring texts were analyzed with respect to their communicative sttucture, function, content and intended
effects on the reader. This motivated an integrated theory of communicative acts which characterizes text at
the level of rhetorical acts (e.g., describe, define, narrate), illocutionary acts (e.g., inform, request), and
locutionary acts (e.g., ask, command). Taken as a whole, the identified communicative acts characterize
the structure, content and intended effects of four types of text: description, narration, exposition,
argument. These text types have distinct effects such as getting the reader to know about entities, to know
about events, to understand plans, processes, or propositions, or to believe propositions or want to
perform actions. In addition to identifying the communicative function and effect of text at multiple levels
of abstraction, this dissertation details a tripartite theory of focus of attention (discourse focus, temporal
focus, and spatial focus) which constrains the planning and linguistic realization of text.
To test the integrated theory of communicative acts and tripartite theory of focus of attention, a text
generation system TEXPLAN (Textual EXplanation PLANner) was implemented that plans and
linguistically realizes multisentential and multiparagraph explanations from knowledge based systems. The
communicative acts identified during text analysis were formalized as over sixty compositional and (in
some cases) recursive plan operators in the library of a hierarchical planner. Discourse, temporal, and
spatial focus models were implemented to track and use attentional information to guide the organization
and realization of text. Because the plan operators distinguish between the communicative function (e.g.,
argue for a proposition) and the expected effect (e.g., the reader believes the proposition) of communicative
acts, the system is able to construct a discourse model of the structure and function of its textual responses
as well as a user model of the expected effects of its responses on the reader's knowledge, beliefs, and
desires. The system uses both the discourse model and user model to guide subsequent utterances. To test
its generality, the system was interfaced to a variety of domain applications including a neuropsychological
diagnosis system, a mission planning system, and a knowledge based mission simulator. The system
produces descriptions, narrations, expositions, and arguments from these applications, thus exhibiting a
broader range of rhetorical coverage than previous text generation systems
ONTOGENERATION: Reusing Domain and Linguistic Ontologies for Spanish Text Generation
A significant problem facing the reuse of ontologies is to make their content more widely accessible to any potential user. Wording all the information represented in an ontology is the best way to ease the retrieval and understanding of its contents. This article proposes a general approach to reuse domain and linguistic ontologies with natural language generation technology, describing a practical system for the generation of Spanish texts in the domain of chemical substances. For this purpose the following steps have been taken: (a) an ontology in the chemicals domain developed under the METHONTOLOGY framework and the Ontology Design Environment (ODE) has been taken as knowledge source; (b) the linguistic ontology GUM (Generalized Upper Model) used in other languages has been extended and modified for Spanish; (c) a Spanish grammar has been built following the systemic-functional model by using the KPML (Komet-Penman Multilingual) environment. As result, the final system named Ontogeneration permits the user to consult and retrieve all the information of the ontology in Spanish
Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance
In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences
Spanish generation in the NLP system 'LOLITA'
The aim of this research has been to modify the NLG module in the NLP system LOLITA to enable it to produce Spanish utterances. Natural Language Generation (NLG) is the production of text in a surface language by the computer in order to meet communicative goals. The NLG module of LOLITA is currently able to generate English utterances. It provides the generation capabilities required for the prototype applications built onto LOLITA. The module also aids in the development and debugging of the system as NL utterances are easier to understand than the semantic network representation. The LOLITA generator receives as in put the whole LOLITA semantic network, 'SemNet',(the system knowledge base) and adopts the traditional two components architecture. However, the distribution of task between the planner and plan-realiser (planner and realiser in other systems) differs from that in traditional systems as the plan-realiser can perform tasks such as the selection of content traditionally performed by a planner. The Spanish generator is based upon the same theoretical principles as the current English generator. SemNet forms the input of the generator and has been expanded for this purpose by the addition of Spanish lexical entries and information associated with them. The existing planner module has been used while the plan-realiser has been modified by developing new solutions where the existing ones were not adequate for producing correct Spanish utterances. The generator has been implemented in the pure functional language Haskell, taking advantage of several features of this language and, like LOLITA, it has been built following Natural Language Engineering principles. These two aspects influencing the research are also described
Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation
This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language
Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from
non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the
field has undergone over the past decade or so, especially in relation to new
(usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology.
This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on
the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are
organised; (b) highlight a number of relatively recent research topics that
have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas
of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG
evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of Natural
Language Processing, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the
relationships between them.Comment: Published in Journal of AI Research (JAIR), volume 61, pp 75-170. 118
pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl
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