NLH/E: A Natural Language Help System

Walter F. Tichy, Rolf Adams, Lars Holter

Abstract

A natural language help (NLH) system answers questions that are entered as typed, natural language sentences.Compared to traditional keyword lookup, natural language input allows greater flexibility and precision.This report describes such a help system, NLH/E, which answers questions formulated in English.Currently, it can process questions about a substantial domain: over 130 functions described in five chapters of the Common Lisp manual.NLH/E is built with a novel caseframe parser that operates with a thesaurus, case inheritance, and noun/verb phrase unifica tion.These features reduce the size of the grammer considerably, making it feasible to build realistic NLH systems.Statistical data about the grammar are included.NLH is a first step towards a reusability expert, i.e., a program that helps a client find reusable software components by engaging in a natural language dialogue.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{Tichy-al:ICSE89,
  author    = {Walter F. Tichy and
               Rolf Adams and
               Lars Holter},
  title     = {{NLH/E:} A Natural Language Help System},
  booktitle = {ICSE},
  pages     = {364--374},
  publisher = {{IEEE} Computer Society / {ACM} Press},
  year      = {1989},
}

NLH/E: A Natural Language Help System

Abstract

Related papers