Towards a Theory of Comprehension of Declarative Contexts

TOWARDS A THEORY OF COMPREHENSION OF DECLARATIVE CONTEXTS Fernando Gomez Department of Computer Science University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida 32816 ABSTRACT An outline of a theory of comprehension of declarative contexts is presented. The main aspect of the theory being developed is based on Kant's distinction between concepts as rules (we have called them conceptual specialists) and concepts as an abstract representation (schemata, frames). Comprehension is viewed as a process dependent on the conceptual specialists (they contain the infe- rential knowledge), the schemata or frames (they contain the declarative knowledge), and a parser. The function of the parser is to produce a segmen- tation of the sentences in a case frame structure, thus determininig the meaning of prepositions, polysemous verbs, noun group etc. The function of this parser is not to produce an output to be in- terpreted by semantic routines or an interpreter~ but to start the parsing process and proceed until a concept relevant to the theme of the text is recognized. Then the concept takes control of the comprehension process overriding the lower level linguistic process. Hence comprehension is viewed as a process in which high level sources of know- ledge (concepts) override lower level linguistic processes. i. Introduction This paper deals with a theory of computer comprehension of descriptive contexts. By "descriptive contexts" I refer to the language of scientific books, text books, this text, etc.. In the distinction performative vs. declarative, descriptive texts clearly fall in the declarative side. Recent work in natural language has dealt with contexts in which the computer understanding depends on the meaning of the action verbs and the human actions (plans, intentions, goals) indicated by them (Schank and Abelson 1977; Grosz 1977; Wilensky 1978; Bruce and Newman 1978). Also a considerable amount of work has been done in a plan-based theory of task oriented dialogues (Cohen and Perrault 1979; Perrault and Allen 1980; Hobbs and Evans 1980). This work has had very little bearing on a theory of ~omputer understanding of descriptive contexts. One of the main tenets of the proposed research is that descriptive (or declarative as we prefer to call them) contexts call for different theoretical ideas compared to those proposed for the understanding of human actions, although~ naturally there are aspects that are common. An important characteristic of these contexts is the predominance of descriptive predicates and verbs (verbs such as "contain," "refer," "consist of," etc.) over action verbs. A direct result of this is that the meaning of the sentence does not depend as much on the main verb of the sentence as on the concepts that make it up. Hence meaning representations centered in the main verb of the sentence are futile for these contexts. We have approached the problem of comprehension in these contexts by considering concepts both as active agents that recognize themselves and as an abstract representation of the properties of an object. This aspect of the theory being developed is based on Kant's distinction between concepts as rules (we have …

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