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Using focus to generate complex and simple sentences

Published: 02 July 1984 Publication History

Abstract

One problem for the generation of natural language text is determining when to use a sequence of simple sentences and when a single complex one is more appropriate. In this paper, we show how focus of attention is one factor that influences this decision and describe its implementation in a system that generates explanations for a student advisor expert system. The implementation uses tests on functional information such as focus of attention within the Prolog definite clause grammar formalism to determine when to use complex sentences, resulting in an efficient generator that has the same benefits as a functional grammar system.

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cover image DL Hosted proceedings
ACL '84/COLING '84: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and 22nd annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics
July 1984
577 pages

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Association for Computational Linguistics

United States

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Published: 02 July 1984

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  • (1990)A text generation system for explaining concepts in geometryProceedings of the 13th conference on Computational linguistics - Volume 310.3115/991146.991239(425-427)Online publication date: 20-Aug-1990
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  • (1988)Assigning intonational features in synthesized spoken directionsProceedings of the 26th annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics10.3115/982023.982046(187-193)Online publication date: 7-Jun-1988
  • (1987)Functional unification grammar revisitedProceedings of the 25th annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics10.3115/981175.981189(97-103)Online publication date: 6-Jul-1987
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  • (1986)Computer with expert systemsProceedings of 1986 ACM Fall joint computer conference10.5555/324493.324573(241-246)Online publication date: 2-Nov-1986
  • (1986)The lexicon in text generationProceedings of the workshop on Strategic computing natural language10.3115/1077146.1077176(242-256)Online publication date: 1-May-1986
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