Paper:
Language: English:

Programming in Everyday Language: A Case for Email Management

Toru Sugimoto^, Noriko Ito^, Shino Iwashita^,
and Michio Sugeno^**

^RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
^Faculty of Culture and Information Science, Doshisha University, 1-3 Tatara Miyakodani, Kyotanabe, Kyoto 610-0394, Japan
^Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, 4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka 815-8540, Japan

Received: November 30, 2005

Accepted: June 25, 2006

Keywords: everyday language, paraphrasing, rhetorical structure, program generation

Journal ref: Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol.10, No.6 pp. 821-829, 2006

Abstract

We present a processing model of a natural language interface that accepts task specification texts consisting of more than one sentence. Such an interface enables users to easily specify complex requests as coherent texts, in other words, to write a program in everyday language, to operate computing systems. Corresponding to the characteristics of task specification texts, processing consists of paraphrasing, detection of loop structures, and executable program generation using rhetorical information. Algorithms have been fully implemented in our everyday language programming system that deals with personal email management tasks. In this paper, we explain our processing model using an example from the email management domain, give evaluation results, and discuss its effectiveness and future work.

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