Adaptive Natural Language Interface Design in a DOOD Framework

In this paper we present the Deductive Object-oriented Approach (DOA), a new framework for natural language interface design. It makes use of the available powerful logic and object-oriented programming language of deductive object-oriented databases (DOOD) to develop the interface as component of the database system. This provides the basis for a consistent and e cient mapping of the user input to the target representation. Especially object-oriented inheritance mechanisms make it possible to structure the linguistic knowledge hierarchically, which guarantees a compact and natural representation. One of the main di culties for the practicable use of natural language interfaces is the required high amount of manual knowledge acquisition. For each portation to a new application domain the developer has to repeat this elaborate process. Furthermore, the interfaces are often part of dynamic environments with constant changes concerning the addressed topics or the user population. Therefore, we propose adaptive techniques to deal e ciently with these high demands on dynamic knowledge engineering. This paper focuses on the modules of the lexical component for Japanese language. As rst test of the feasibility of our approach we applied the interface architecture successfully to the question support facility of the VIENA Classroom collaborative hypermedia education system.