Generating Natural Language Under Pragmatic Constraints

Hardcover, xiii + 214 pages. Ex-university library, stamped "cancelled"; internal ownership and inventory markings. Clean, untanned interior with unmarked text. External wear to the boards (frayed and scuffed upper spine edge, rubbing to the tips of corners). Issued without a dust jacket. -- This volume presents a study in computational linguistics, addressing a fundamental question in artificial intelligence: how can computer systems generate language that adapts to different audiences and social contexts, much as human speakers do naturally? The book recognises that the generation of natural language is a goal-driven process, where many of the goals are pragmatic - that is, interpersonal and situational in nature - and provides an overview of the role of pragmatics in language generation. Each chapter states a problem that arises in generation, develops a pragmatics-based solution, and describes how the solution is implemented in PAULINE (Planning And Uttering Language In Natural Environments), a language generator that can produce numerous versions of a single underlying message, depending on its setting. The work remains significant for researchers in natural language processing, computational linguistics, and AI communication systems. Its treatment of how pragmatic factors such as speaker intent, audience awareness, and conversational setting should influence generated text anticipates many concerns central to contemporary language model development and human-computer interaction design.…