Shifting to a Higher Gear in a Natural Language System

Abstract

We have completed the development of the REL System, a system for communicating with the computer in natural language concerning a relational database. We have been using that system in a series of experiments on how people actually do communicate in solving an intellectual task. These experiments, together with our general experience with REL, and related work elsewhere, have led us to the specification and development of a new system, the POL (Problem Oriented Language) System. POL is an evolutionary extension of REL, preserving what has worked, and extending and adding new capabilities to meet observed needs. These improvements include more responsive diagnostics, handling of sentence fragments, inter knowledge base communications, and new facilities for building and extending the knowledge bases of users. This paper introduces POL.