{ "paper_id": "T75-2027", "header": { "generated_with": "S2ORC 1.0.0", "date_generated": "2023-01-19T07:43:12.496838Z" }, "title": "Some Methodological Issues in Natural Language Understanding Research", "authors": [ { "first": "Beranek", "middle": [], "last": "~nd", "suffix": "", "affiliation": {}, "email": "" } ], "year": "", "venue": null, "identifiers": {}, "abstract": "", "pdf_parse": { "paper_id": "T75-2027", "_pdf_hash": "", "abstract": [], "body_text": [ { "text": "to model the performance aspects of human beings. Theoretical and empirical studies of this sort provide the foundations on which models of human language processing are built which are then subject to empirical verification. They also provide the \"bag of tricks\" out of which useful mechanical language understanding systems can be constructed.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Outside the common area of endeavor, these two different objectives have different goals. For both objectives, however, a major component of the research should be to study the device independent language understanding problem. This paper is an attempt to set down my biases on some issues of methodology for constructing natural language understanding systems and for performing research in computational linguistics and language understanding. In it I will discuss some of the methods that I have found either effective and/or needed for performing useful work in the area of human and mechanical language understanding. For theoretical studies, I will argue strongly for a methodology which stresses communicable and comprehensible theories, with precise uses of terms and an evaluation of formalisms which stresses the cognitive efficiency of the representations of the formalism itself.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 265, "end": 463, "text": "my biases on some issues of methodology for constructing natural language understanding systems and for performing research in computational linguistics and language understanding.", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 477, "end": 660, "text": "discuss some of the methods that I have found either effective and/or needed for performing useful work in the area of human and mechanical language understanding.", "ref_id": null } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "I will attempt to cite several examples of the differences in cognitive efficiency between formalisms.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The thrust of many of my comments will deal with the problems of complexity. My thesis is that natural language, unlike many physical systems is complex in that it takes a large number of facts, rules, or what have you to characterize its behavior rather than a small number of equations (of whatever theoretical sophistication or depth).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "It is relatively easy to construct a grammar or other characterization for a fairly small subset of the language (at least it is becoming more and more so today), but it is not so easy to cope with the complexity of the specification when one begins to put in the magnitude of facts of language which are necessary to deal with a significant fraction of human language performance. Theories for natural language understanding will have to deal effectively with problems of scale the number of facts embodied in the theory.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Since this paper is largely designed to promote discussion, the set of issues covered herein makes no effort to be complete.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "My goal is to raise some issues for consideration and debate.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The first point that I would like to make is that in the pursuit of theoretical understanding in linguistics or psycholinguistics, studies will be much more productive if pursued in the context of total language understanding systems and not in isolation. Many of the things which we \"know\" are not expressed in language, and the fact that finding the appropriate words to describe things that we understand is sometimes very difficult should give us a clue that the representation which we use in our heads is not a simple transcription of the language that we use to communicate with others.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "If. A PROGRAM FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGY", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Rather, there are a variety of exposition problems which need to be solved in order to translate even ideas which .are clearly understood into a linear sequence of linguistic symbols which will be likely to arouse or create the same idea in the head of our listener.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "If. A PROGRAM FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGY", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "It seems likely then that the notation or whatever conventions that we use to store ideas and information in our heads is not the same as the language that we speak to communicate with others.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "If. A PROGRAM FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGY", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The language that we speak and write, then, appears to be a device or a discipline evolved for the purpose of attempting to arouse in the head of the listener something similar to that which is encoded in the head of the speaker. and that such a discipline should be forced on a programmer because the code he will write under such a discipline will be better. This extreme point of view is presumably in contrast to the situation in the language FORTRAN where one can handle branching only by \"naming\" each of the branches with (unmnemonic) numeric labels and specifying go-to instructions in terms of such labels.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "If. A PROGRAM FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGY", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "However, I would argue that in many other situations, with a language which permits mnemonic labels, a programmer can insert a go-to instruction for the same kinds of reasons that he creates many subroutines --i.e., there is a significant chunk of operation which in his mind is a unit (for which he has or can coin a name) and which he would like to represent in his code in a way that will enable him to read portions of the code at a level of detail which is cognitively efficient.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "If. A PROGRAM FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGY", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "When go-to instructions are used in this way, they have the same value that the ability to write subroutines provides (not only efficiency of writing a given portion of code once while being able to enter it for execution from several places, but also the cognitive efficiency of being able to ignore details of how some process operates by referring to it by name or label in situations where it is the purpose or goal of a procedure or block of code which is important and not the details).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "If. A PROGRAM FOR THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS AND PSYCHOLOGY", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Not only must the individual rules of a complex system be comprehensible to the system designer and the student, but also the control framework into which these rules fit must be understood.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "VIII. THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIBLE FRAMEWORK", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Again, there is a principle of cognitive efficiency in operation.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "VIII. THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIBLE FRAMEWORK", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A control framework which is simple to explain and easily remembered by the student of the system as he studies it, is far preferable to one which constantly misleads the student into thinking that something happens in one way when it actually happens differently or not at all. One cannot write rules for a system when he is not sure how it will apply the rules or when.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "VIII. THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIBLE FRAMEWORK", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Languages which take away from the programmer the burden of specifying the details of control structure should not also take away his ability to easily understand and forsee what will happen in response to his rules. the specialized areas of language understanding within the framework of a global picture of the entire language understanding process. I have called for more care in the precise use of terms and the use where possible of accepted existing terms rather than inventing unnecessary new ones.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 217, "end": 359, "text": "the specialized areas of language understanding within the framework of a global picture of the entire language understanding", "ref_id": null } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "VIII. THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIBLE FRAMEWORK", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "I have also stressed the necessity that models must produce some overt behavior which can be evaluated, and have noted the desirability of finding explanatory models rather than mere descriptive models if one is really to produce an understanding of the language understanding process.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "IX. COGNITIVE EFFICIENCY IN GRAMMARS", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "I hope that the paper will serve as a useful basis for discussion. ", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "IX. COGNITIVE EFFICIENCY IN GRAMMARS", "sec_num": null } ], "back_matter": [], "bib_entries": {}, "ref_entries": {} } }