Mystery Number Two - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 41

An LA-hear grammar rule consists of (i) a rule name, (ii) a rule package, (iii)
a pattern for an ss (sentence start), (iv) a pattern for an nw (next word), and
(v) a pattern for the resulting (next) sentence start ( ss ). A pattern at the rule
level matches a proplet at the language level if (a) the attributes of the pattern
are a subset of the attributes of the proplet and (b) the values of the pattern are
compatible with the values of the proplet.
Vertical binding of the variables in the input patterns (rule level) to the cor-
responding constants in the language input (language level) enables the rule
to compute an output. The new content is built by replacing the variables in
the output patterns with the constants matching the input part of the rule. The
operation is performed at the language level.
For example, by binding the variable

of the input pattern to the corre-
sponding constant Julia (language level), the [arg:

α

] feature of the output
pattern (rule level) provides the value Julia to the arg attribute of the output
at the language level. If a current rule application is successful, the resulting
sentence start is provided with the proplet of a next word, if available, by au-
tomatic word form recognition. This results in a new input pair to which the
rules of the current rule package are applied.
Variants of the method illustrated in 3.4.1 are used in the other two steps of
the communication cycle, i.e., the think mode, based in part 10 on LA-think,
and the speak mode, realized by LA-speak. An LA-think grammar powers the
navigation from one proplet to the next along the semantic relations between
them, resulting in a selective activation of content stored in the Word Bank.
An LA-think rule takes a current proplet as input and computes a next proplet
as output (successor).
Consider the LA-think rule VNs (from verb to noun). It is shown as it exe-
cutes navigation step 1 from the first to the second proplet in 3.3.2:

α

3.4.2 LA- THINK RULE APPLICATION

i. rule name ii. rule package

VNs {NVs}

iii. current proplet iv. next proplet

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

rule level verb: β

arg: X α Y
prn: K

noun: α
fnc: β
prn: K

⇒

matching and binding of variables ⇑ ⇓

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

verb: know
cat: decl
arg: Julia John
prn: 625

noun: Julia
cat: nm
fnc: know
prn: 625

Word Bank level