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TECHNICAL NOTE:  203\hfill PRICE: \$14.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  CONVERSATION AS PLANNED BEHAVIOR\\
AUTHORS:  JERRY H. HOBBS and DAVID A. EVANS\\
DATE:  DECEMBER 1979\\[0.01in]

ABSTRACT: Perhaps the most  promising  working hypothesis for the
study of conversation is that the participants can be viewed  as using
planning   mechanisms  much     like those   developed  in  artificial
intelligence.  In    this  paper,   a  framework    for  investigating
conversation,  which  for convenience   will  be  called  the Planning
Approach, is developed from this  hypothesis.  It suggests  a style of
analysis  to   apply  to conversation,    analysis   in terms  of  the
participants' goals, plans, and beliefs, and it indicates a consequent
program of research to  be pursued.     These are developed  in detail
in Part 2.

     Parts 3 and  4 are  devoted to  the microanalysis  of  an  actual
free-flowing  conversation,  as   an   illustration  of   the style of
analysis.  In the process, order is discovered in a conversation  that
on the surface seems   quite  incoherent.  The microanalysis  suggests
some   ways in which  the   planning mechanisms  common  in artificial
intelligence will have to be extended to  deal with  conversation, and
these are  discussed in Part  5.   In  Part 6, certain   methdological
difficulties are examined.   Part 7 addresses the  problem that arises
in this approach of what constitutes successful communication.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  204\hfill PRICE:  \$12.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  METAPHOR, METAPHOR SCHEMATA, AND SELECTIVE INFERENCING\\
AUTHOR:  JERRY R. HOBBS\\
DATE:  DECEMBER 1979\\[0.01in]

     ABSTRACT: The  importance  of  spatial  and  other metaphors   is
demonstrated.  An approach  to  handling metaphor  in a  computational
framework is described,  based on the  idea  of selective inferencing.
Three examples of  metaphors are examined in detail  in this  light--a
simple metaphor,  a spatial metaphor  schema,  and  a novel  metaphor.
Finally, there is  a   discussion,  from  this   perspective,  of  the
analogical processes that underlie metaphor in this  approach and what
the approach says about several classical questions about metaphor.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  205\hfill PRICE:  \$16.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  DIAGRAM:  A GRAMMAR FOR DIALOGUES\\
AUTHOR:  JANE J. ROBINSON\\
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1980\\[0.01in]

     ABSTRACT: This paper presents an explanatory overview  of a large
and complex grammar, DIAGRAM, that is  used in a  computer  system for
interpreting English dialogue.  DIAGRAM  analyzes  all of  the   basic
kinds of phrases  and sentences and many  quite complex  ones as well.
It is not tied to a particular domain  of application, and  it  can be
extended to analyze additional constructions,  using  the formalism in
which it is currently   written.  For every   expression it  analyzes,
DIAGRAM provides an annotated description of  the structural relations
holding  among its  constituents.   The  annotations provide important
information  for  other parts  of   the  system  that  interpret   the
expression in the context of a dialogue.

     DIAGRAM  is  an augmented  phrase  structure grammar.  Its   rule
procedures allow phrases to inherit attributes from their constituents
and  to acquire attributes from   the  larger  phrases  in which  they
themselves are constituents.   Consequently, when these attributes are
used to  set context-sensitive  constraints  on  the acceptance  of an
analysis,  the contextual constraints can  be imposed by conditions on
dominance as well as conditions on constituency.  Rule  procedures can
also assign scores to an analysis, rating some applications of a  rule
as probable or  as unlikely.  Less  likely analyses can be ignored  by
the procedures that interpret the utterance.

     In   assigning categories and  writing  the   rule statements and
procedures for DIAGRAM, decisions were guided by  consideration of the
functions  that  phrases  serve in   communication   as   well  as  by
considerations   of  efficiency  in  relating    syntactic analyses to
propositional   content.   The major  decisions  are   explained   and
illustrated with examples of the rules and the analyses they  provide.
Some contrasts with  transformational grammars  are pointed  out and
problems that motivate a plan to use  redundancy  rules  in the future
are discussed.  (Redundancy   rules  are meta-rules   that  derive new
constituent-structure rules    from a  set    of  base rules,  thereby
achieving generality of syntactic  statement without having to perform
transformations on  syntactic analyses.)    Other extensions of   both
grammar  and formalism   are  projected in  the  concluding   section.
Appendices  provide  details  and  samples of the  lexicon,  the  rule
statements, and the   procedures,  as well  as   analyses  for several
sentences that differ in type and structure.\\
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TECHNICAL NOTE:  206\hfill PRICE:  \$14.00\\[0.01in]

\noindent TITLE:  THE INTERPRETATION OF VERB PHRASES IN DIALOGS\\
AUTHOR:  ANN E. ROBINSON\\
DATE:  JANUARY 1980\\[0.01in]

     ABSTRACT:   This  paper discusses two   problems  central to  the
interpretation of  utterances: determining   the relationship  between
actions described in  an utterance  and  events   in   the world,  and
inferring the state of the world'' from utterances.   Knowledge of the
language, knowledge about   the general subject  being  discussed, and
knowledge about the current situation are all necessary for this.  The
problem of  determining an action  referred toby  a  verb  phrase   is
analogous  to the problem of determining  the object referred  to by a
noun phrase.

     This paper presents  an approach to the  problems of verb phrases
resolution in which knowledge about language, the  problem domain, and
the dialog itself is combined to interpret such references.  Presented
and  discussed are the  kinds of knowledge  necessary for interpreting
references to actions, as well as algorithms  for using that knowledge
in interpreting dialog utterances about  ongoing tasks and for drawing
inferences  about  the task situation    that are   based  on a  given
interpretation.\\
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