We address the problem of extracting Minimal Unsatisfiable Cores (MUCs) from constraint networks. This computationally hard problem has a practical interest in many application domains such as configuration, planning, diagnosis, etc. Indeed, identifying one or several disjoint MUCs can help circumscribe different sources of inconsistency in order to repair a system. In this paper, we propose an...

We investigate the understanding of landmarks using a model of embedding procedures that sees affordances established on three levels. On the first level there are landmark experience and direct communication process as distinct affordance structures. On the second level the initial landmark experience has become part of the speech act thus establishing direct wayfinding communication. On the t...

This paper describes a robust parsing algorithm for spoken language understanding. Comparing with the other work in robust parsing, we focus on building a parser that is robust to not only ill-formed spontaneous spoken language inputs but also under-specified grammars. Preliminary experiment results show that the parsing performance deteriorates more gracefully than another parser we have used ...

Traditional approaches to the problem of extracting data from texts have emphasized hand-crafted linguisti c knowledge . In contrast, BBN's PLUM system (Probabilistic Language Understanding Model) was developed a s part of a DARPA-funded research effort on integrating probabilistic language models with more traditional linguistic techniques . Our research and development goals are • more rapid ...

The elements of the stock of knowledge shared .by the speaker and the hearer change their salience, in the sense of being immediately accessible in the bearer's memory. The hierarchy of salience is argued to be a basic component of a mechanism serving for the identification of reference. Some of the regularities of this mechanism are discussed, the description of which is a necessary prerequisi...

In this paper, we define event expression over sentences of natural language and semantic relations between events. Based on this definition, we formally consider text understanding process having events as basic unit.

INCORPORATING NON-VERBAL MODALITIES IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING FOR MULTIMODAL CONVERSATIONAL SYSTEMS

This year, project efforts are focused on reapplying and revising existing evaluation techniques for the purpose of evaluating English and Japanese information extraction systems in the joint ventures and microelectronics domains. This year's effort will culminate in the Fifth Message Understanding Conference (MUC-5) in August, 1993. development in March, 1993, in preparation for the evaluation...