Natural Language for Exert Systems: Comparisons with Database Systems

Do natural language database systems still ,~lovide a valuable environment for further work on n~,tural language processing? Are there other sys tems which provide the same hard environment :for testing, but allow us to explore more interesting natural language questions? In order to answer , o to the first question and yes to the second (the position taken by our panel's chair}, there must be an interesting language problem which is more naturally studied in some other system than in the database system.