Towards a generation-based semantic web authoring tool

Widespread use of Semantic Web technologies requires interfaces through which knowledge can be viewed and edited without deep understanding of Description Logic and formalisms like OWL and RDF. Several groups are pursuing approaches based on Controlled Natural Languages (CNLs), so that editing can be performed by typing in sentences which are automatically interpreted as statements in OWL. We suggest here a variant of this approach which relies entirely on Natural Language Generation (NLG), and propose requirements for a system that can reliably generate transparent realisations of statements in Description Logic

Beyond the Pie: Communicating with Smart Objects Using Menu-Based Natural Language Interfaces

In both real and 3D virtual worlds, people and avatars (representations of people) need to be able to communicate with things around them. Without guidance, however, people cannot use the language that the things can understand. The goal of our research is to extend the 3D virtual world Second Life® to better model pervasive computing and overcome the boundaries of communication. The aim of this paper is to show how to build a dynamic menu-based user interface that enables humans to communicate with model entities. The focus is the applicability of object-specific grammars associated with things (objects in the real and virtual worlds) and a GUI consisting of cascaded menus to guide people in “talking to” things. This paper discusses the prototype model of a new virtual controller that takes us closer to the ultimate goal – a system that extends the Second Life user interface so that people can task robots using a menu interface

Beyond the Pie: Communicating with Smart Objects Using Menu-Based Natural Language Interfaces

In both real and 3D virtual worlds, people and avatars (representations of people) need to be able to communicate with things around them. Without guidance, however, people cannot use the language that the things can understand. The goal of our research is to extend the 3D virtual world Second Life® to better model pervasive computing and overcome the boundaries of communication. The aim of this paper is to show how to build a dynamic menu-based user interface that enables humans to communicate with model entities. The focus is the applicability of object-specific grammars associated with things (objects in the real and virtual worlds) and a GUI consisting of cascaded menus to guide people in “talking to” things. This paper discusses the prototype model of a new virtual controller that takes us closer to the ultimate goal – a system that extends the Second Life user interface so that people can task robots using a menu interface

Talking to the Semantic Web – Query Interfaces to Ontologies for the Casual User

The Semantic Web presents the vision of a dynamically growing knowledge base that should allow users to draw on and combine distributed information sources specified in languages based on formal logic. Common users, however, were shown to have problems even with the simplest Boolean expressions [4]; the use of th

Dynamic Composition of Agent Grammars

In the very near future, as pervasive computing takes root, there will be an explosion of everyday objects that are uniquely identifiable and wrapped by a computational layer- effectively bringing the object to life. An important component of this system is the mechanism that will allow humans to interface with the objects. Menu Based Natural Language Interfaces (MBNLI) seem like a good candidate for this job because of the intuitive way in which they allow the user to build commands. However, the MBNLI system will have to scale with the number of objects in the system. This project describes context free grammar modules which are small grammar files that can be composed to form a larger grammar. Grammar modules can then be associated with individual objects, and in this way allow the MBNU to scale according to the size of the system

Is question answering fit for the Semantic Web? A survey

With the recent rapid growth of the Semantic Web (SW), the processes of searching and querying content that is both massive in scale and heterogeneous have become increasingly challenging. User-friendly interfaces, which can support end users in querying and exploring this novel and diverse, structured information space, are needed to make the vision of the SW a reality. We present a survey on ontology-based Question Answering (QA), which has emerged in recent years to exploit the opportunities offered by structured semantic information on the Web. First, we provide a comprehensive perspective by analyzing the general background and history of the QA research field, from influential works from the artificial intelligence and database communities developed in the 70s and later decades, through open domain QA stimulated by the QA track in TREC since 1999, to the latest commercial semantic QA solutions, before tacking the current state of the art in open userfriendly interfaces for the SW. Second, we examine the potential of this technology to go beyond the current state of the art to support end-users in reusing and querying the SW content. We conclude our review with an outlook for this novel research area, focusing in particular on the R&D directions that need to be pursued to realize the goal of efficient and competent retrieval and integration of answers from large scale, heterogeneous, and continuously evolving semantic sources

Přirozený jazyk ve webových vyhledávačích

(česky): Diplomová práce je zaměřena na problematiku využití přirozeného jazyka ve webových vyhledávačích, zdůrazňuje multioborový charakter dané problematiky. Propojuje základní přístupy z lingvistiky, psychologie, kognitivní vědy, informační vědy a neuropsychologie, s cílem vytvořit její komplexnější obraz. Bližší pohled je věnován člověku jako hybateli celého vývoje v oblasti vyhledávačů a primárnímu uživateli takových systémů. "Lidský informační system" je prezentován jako vzor lepšího uživatelsky přívětivějšího systému pro zpracování informací. Charakter práce je plně teoretický a měl by sloužit jako základ pro další výzkum. Výsledkem je doporučení věnovat se vývoji plně vizuálních systémů s využitím znalostí lidského informačního system, který se na základě studia dostupných zdrojů jeví jako nejlepší cesta.This study is focused on the natural language exploitation in the search engines of the specific web environment. This paper points out the multideparmental character of the problematic and interlink the basic approaches from linguistic, psychology, cognitive science, information science and neuropsychology to create more complex image of the problematic. Closer attention is given to the human as the impetus of the development and as the primary user of such search engines. Human information system is presented as model for the better user friendly information processing system. The character of the paper is fully theoretical and should give the theoretical background for further research. As the result of the research is recommended focus on the fully visual approach in the development with the exploitation of knowledges about HIS.Ústav informačních studií a knihovnictvíInstitute of Information Studies and LibrarianshipFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art