Lexical Semantics In Human-Computer Communication

Most linguistic studies of human-computer communication have focused on the issues of syntax and discourse structure. However, another interesting and important area is the lexical semantics of command languages. The names that users and system designers give the objects and actions of a computer system can greatly affect its usability, and the lexical issues involved are as complicated as those in natural languages. 1"his paper presents an overview of the various studies of naming in computer systems, examining such issues as suggestiveness, memorability, descriptions of categories. and the use of non.words as names. A simple featural framework for the analysis of these phenomena is presented. Most research on the language used in human-computer communication has focused on issues of syntax and discourse; it is hoped that eke day computers will understand a large subset of natural language, and the most obvious problems thus appear to be in parsing and understanding sequences of utterances. The constraints provided by the sublanguages used in current natural language interfaces provide a means for making these issues tractable. Until computers can easily understand these sublanguages, we must continue to use artificial command languages, although the increasing richness of these languages brings them closer and closer to being sublanguages themselves. This fact suggests that we might profitably view the command languages of computer systems as natural languages, having the same three levels of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics {perhaps also morpho-phonemics, if one considers the form in which the interaction takes place with the system: special keys, variant characters, etc.). A particularly interesting and, till recently, neglected area of investigation is the lexical semantics of command languages. What the objects and actions of a system are called is not only practically important but also as theoretically interesting as the lexical phenomena of natural languages. In the field of natural language interfaces there has been some study of complex references, such as Appelt's (1983) work on planning referring expressions, and Finin's (1982) work on parsing complex noun phrases, but individual lexical items have not been treated in much detail. In contrast, the human factors research on command languages and user-interface design has looked at lexical semantics in great detail, though without much linguistic sophistication. In addition, much of this research is psycholinguistic rather than strictly linguistic in character, involving phenomena such as the learning and remembering of names as much as their semantic relations. Nevertheless, a linguistic analysis …