The use of model checking and the COSMA environment in the design of reactive systems

The paper discusses how a bridge between the design practice and the formal methods could be maintained. The use of model checking seems to be the most promising approach. Then, the software environment COSMA is presented, implementated in the Institute of Computer Science,WUT. The conceptual framework of COSMA is based upon Concurrent State Machines (CSM) and Extended CSM, which are also briefly summarized and illustrated with a simple example

Abductive speech act recognition, corporate agents and the COSMA system

This chapter presents an overview of the DISCO project\u27s solutions to several problems in natural language pragmatics. Its central focus is on relating utterances to intentions through speech act recognition. Subproblems include the incorporation of linguistic cues into the speech act recognition process, precise and efficient multiagent belief attribution models (Corporate Agents), and speech act representation and processing using Corporate Agents. These ideas are being tested within the COSMA appointment scheduling system, one application of the DISCO natural language interface. Abductive speech act processing in this environment is not far from realizing its potential for fully bidirectional implementation

Natural language semantics and compiler technology

This paper recommends an approach to the implementation of semantic representation languages (SRLs) which exploits a parallelism between SRLs and programming languages (PLs). The design requirements of SRLs for natural language are similar to those of PLs in their goals. First, in both cases we seek modules in which both the surface representation (print form) and the underlying data structures are important. This requirement highlights the need for general tools allowing the printing and reading of expressions (data structures). Second, these modules need to cooperate with foreign modules, so that the importance of interface technology (compilation) is paramount; and third, both compilers and semantic modules need "inferential" facilities for transforming (simplifying) complex expressions in order to ease subsequent processing. But the most important parallel is the need in both fields for tools which are useful in combination with a variety of concrete languages -- general purpose parsers, printers, simplifiers (transformation facilities) and compilers. This arises in PL technology from (among other things) the need for experimentation in language design, which is again parallel to the case of SRLs. Using a compiler-based approach, we have implemented NLL, a public domain software package for computational natural language semantics. Several interfaces exist both for grammar modules and for applications, using a variety of interface technologies, including especially compilation. We review here a variety of NLL, applications, focusing on COSMA, an NL interface to a distributed appointment manager