Mystery Number Two - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 38

2. Think mode: selective activation of proplets stored in the Word Bank by
means of a navigation along the semantic relations between them, reintro-
ducing a time-linear order (3.3.2, 3.4.2).
3. Speak mode: production of natural language as a time-linear sequence of
surfaces based on the selective activation of a navigation (3.3.3, 3.4.3).
4. Query answering: retrieval of content corresponding to a schema (4.2.2).

The mapping from ordered lexical proplets to unordered content proplets in
the hear mode and from unordered content proplets to ordered lexical proplets
constitute the DBS Conversion Universal Number 3 in 1.1.3.

3.3 Hear, Think, and Speak Modes

This section illustrates the cycle of natural language communication in a user-
friendly conceptual format. The format represents the basic units as proplets,
but indicates the derivational operations graphically, e.g., by means of arrows.
Let us begin with a time-linear surface compositional hear mode derivation:

3.3.1 DBS HEAR MODE DERIVATION OF Julia knows John.

Julia knows John

lexical lookup

verb: . noun: Julia

cat: nm
fnc:
prn:

verb: know noun: John

cat: s3' a' v cat: nm cat: v' decl

arg: fnc: arg:

prn: prn: prn:

syntactic−semantic parsing

noun: Julia
cat: nm
fnc:

verb: know

cat: s3' a' v

1 N+FV

arg:

prn: 625 prn:

noun: Julia
cat: nm

verb: know noun: John

cat: a' v cat: nm

2 FV+N

fnc: know arg: Julia fnc:

prn: 625 prn: 625 prn:

verb: . noun: Julia

cat: nm

verb: know noun: John

cat: v
arg: Julia John

cat: nm cat: v' decl

3 S+IP

fnc: know fnc: know arg:

prn: 625 prn: 625 prn: 625 prn:

result of syntactic−semantic parsing

noun: Julia
cat: nm

verb: know noun: John

cat: decl cat: nm

fnc: know arg: Julia John fnc: know

prn: 625 prn: 625 prn: 625