Interactive Language Technology

Research Project funded by Vinnova within the Language Technology Programme, 2001-2004. Project nr P20018-2A.
Department of Computing Science, CTH & GU
Department of Linguistics, GU

People

Karin Cavallin, PhD Student, Computational Linguistics.
Robin Cooper, Professor, Computational Linguistics.
Elisabet Engdahl, Associate Professor, Swedish.
Stina Ericsson, PhD Student, Computational Linguistics.
Markus Forsberg, PhD Student, Computing Science.
Harald Hammarström, Project Assistant, Computing Science.
David Hjelm, Project Assistant, Computational Linguistics.
Kristofer Johannisson, PhD Student, Computing Science.
Janna Khegai, PhD Student, Computing Science.
Staffan Larsson, Assistant Professor, Computational Linguistics.
Peter Ljunglöf, PhD Student, Computing Science.
Bengt Nordström, Professor, Computing Science.
Aarne Ranta, Associate Professor, Computing Science (Project Responsible).

Summary

We develop and apply interactive tools for natural language technology. This includes four subprojects:

Multilingual authoring systems
Multilingual dialogue systems
Resource grammars

The applications are based on our previous research on interactive systems, grammar formalisms, and dialogues. They will help in human-machine interaction as well as in the production of multilingual documents.

Interaction with machines becomes more and more important as microprocessors are used in different kinds of applicances. Our technology aims at natural, easily updatable dialogue protocols, which can be produced quickly for new devices and in new languages. Largely the same technology is usable in written documents, e.g. user manuals and web documents. We see speech and text as two complementary ways of accessing the same information.

The main goal of the first year was a stable version of the grammar formalism GF and a set of generic GF tools enabling the planned applications. This led to the release of GF Version 1.0 in June 2002. The main goals currently are

to integrate GF and the Trindi Kit dialogue systems
to create application-independent resource grammars
to improve the usability of GF for document authors and gramamrians

Software

A. Ranta, M. Forsberg, T. Hallgren, H. Hammarström, K. Johannisson, J. Khegai, P. Ljunglöf, and P. Mäenpää. Grammatical Framework, Version 1.2. Source code, executable programs, and documentation. Available on GF home page (http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~aarne/GF/). June 2003.

R. Cooper, D. Hjelm, S. Larsson TrindiKit, toolkit for building and experimenting with dialogue move engines and information states.

M. Forsberg, K. Johannisson, J. Khegai, and A. Ranta. GF Gramlets. PDA software and multilingual authoring editor demo applet. Available on gramlets homepage.

A. Ranta and J. Khegai. GF Resource Grammar Library, Version 0.3. Source code and documentation. Available on GF Resource Grammar Page. June 2003.

A. Ranta and M. Forsberg. The BNF Converter. Version 1.0. Code and documentation. Available on BNF Converter home page (http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~aarne/BNF/). May 2002.

A. Ranta and M. Forsberg. Functional morphology, Version 0.9. Code and documentation. Available on Functional Morphology home page (http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~aarne/morphology/). June 2003.

A. Ranta and M. Forsberg. Svenska ord. Code and documentation. Available on Svenska Ord -sidan (http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~markus/svenska/). March 2002.

Slides

Vinnova kick-off meeting slides.

Publications

A. Ranta and R. Cooper. "Dialogue Systems as Proof Editors". IJCAR/ICoS-3, Siena, June 2001. Available in gzipped postscript. Revised to an article to appear in the Journal of Language and Computation.

A. Ranta. Grammatical Framework: A Type-Theoretical Grammar Formalism. Manuscript (ps.gz), September 2002. Journal of Functional Programming, to appear.

Cooper, Robin and Staffan Larsson (forthcoming) Accommodation and reaccommodation in dialogue, to appear in Presuppositions and Discourse ed. by Rainer BC$uerle, Uwe Reyle and Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Elsevier, Amsterdam. (ps)

Cooper, Robin and Jonathan Ginzburg (2002) Using Dependent Record Types in Clarification Ellipsis, in Proceedings of Edilog (ps, appendix (ps))

J. Khegai, B. Nordström, and A. Ranta. "Multilingual Syntax Editing in GF", In Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics (CICLing-2003), Mexico City, February 2003, ed. by Alexander Gelbukh. Springer LNCS vol. 2588, pp. 453-464.

J. Khegai and A. Ranta. "Building and Using a Russian Resource Grammar in GF", In Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics (CICLing-2004), Seoul, February 2004, to appear in Springer LNCS. Available in ps.gz.

M. Forsberg and A. Ranta. "Labelled BNF: A High-Level Formalism for Defining Well-Behaved Programming Languages", In Nordic Workshop on Programming Theory (NWPT 2003), Tallinn, November 2002. Extended abstract in ps.gz. Full article to appear in a special volume of the Estonian Academy of Sciences.

R. Hähnle, K. Johannisson, and A. Ranta. "An Authoring Tool for Informal and Formal Requirements Specifications". In ETAPS/FASE-2002: Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering, ed. by R. D. Kutsche and H. Weber, Springer LNCS, vol. 2306, pp. 233--248, 2002. Available in pdf.

A. Ranta. "Grammatical Framework Tutorial", ESSLLI Summer School, Vienna 2004. Available in pdf.

Related projects

TALK, European project on Multimodality in Dialogue Systems.

Records, types and computational dialogue semantics. Project funded by Vetenskapsrådet.

SIRIDUS, European project on Specification, Interaction and Reconfiguration in Dialogue Understanding Systems. (Link currently unavailable)

D'Homme, European Project on Dialogues in the Home Machine Environment. (Link currently unavailable)

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Aarne Ranta

Last modified: Dec 10, 2003.