A Foundation for Flexible Automated Electronic Communication

In this paper the author describes a formal language for communication based on linguistics—more specifically, a theory of natural language communication and models of natural language conversations. The language has a small number of general message types which are formally defined by their intended effects on the recipient. For each message type he defines a standard, automated method of responding that depends only on the message type and is independent of the message’s content. For more complex conversations he provides methods for responding that do depend on the content. In this system, a message’s sender—automated or human—constructs and sends a message knowing that he cannot know, but can only predict, how it will be interpreted. The agent receiving the message interprets it and then uses it as a basis for inferring how it should respond. The message interpretation mechanism for this language is reusable, modular and shared by all applications. The benefit of this communication system is that it makes the communication infrastructure more flexible, easier to modify, easier to expand, and more capable.