Abstract
The temporal dimension adds to databases the capability of functioning as repositories of narratives about the objects involved. Database narratives correspond both to sequences of past events and to simulated future events. This work addresses the problem of displaying such narratives in natural language. We focus here on the first kind of narrative, that is, we analyze a segment extracted from a log of the execution of pre-defined application- oriented operations, which is treated as a plot of the narrative in question. The main point in the presentation is that a three-level conceptual schema of the database provides a sound basis for interpreting such plots, although it should be complemented with further linguistic processing for the sake of fluency and conciseness. The schema-driven method for generating narratives from plots is described. A prototype Prolog implementation of the method is operational. A simple example is used to illustrate the discussion.
The work of the second author was supported by FAPERJ - Fundaçäo de Amparo á Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
G. Brown and G. Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
A. E. M. Ciarlini and A. L. Furtado. “Simulating the interaction of database agents”. In Proc. DEXA.99 Database and Expert Systems Applications Conference, Florence, Italy, 1999.
A. L. Furtado and M. A. Casanova. “Plan and schedule generation over temporal databases”. in Proc. of the 9th International Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach, 1990.
A.L. Furtado and A. E. M. Ciarlini. “Plots of narratives over temporal databases”. in Proc. of the 8th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications. R. R. Wagner (ed.). IEEE Computer Society, 1997.
C. Fillmore. “The case for case”. In Universals in Linguistic Theory. E. Bach and R. Harms (eds.). Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
A. L. Furtado and E. J. Neuhold. Fornal Techniques for Data Base Design. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1986.
B. J. Grosz, K. S. Jones and B. L. Webber (eds.). Readings in Natural Language Processing. San Mateo: Morgan Kaufmann, 1986.
H. P. Grice. “Logic and conversation”. In Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.). Academic Press, 1975.
E. H. Hovy and E. Maier. “Parsimonious or profligate: how many and which discourse structure relations?”. Announced for Discourse Process. Currently available from http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/discourse/text-planning.html.
J. L. Kolodner. Case-Based Reasoning. San Mateo: Morgan Kaufmann, 1993.
C.J. Matheus, P.K. Chan. and G. Piatesky-Shapiro. “Systems for knowledge discovery in databases”. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 5, 6, 1993.
K.R. McKeown. Text Generation: Using Dscourse Strategies and Focus Constraints to Generate Natural Language Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
W. C. Mann and S. A. Thompson. “Rhetorical structure theory; toward a functional theory of text organization”. Text, 8, 3, 1988.
V. Propp. Morphology of the Folktale. Laurence Scott (trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968.
16. R.C. Schank and R.P. Abelson. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, 1977.
D.R. Scott and C.S. de Souza. “Getting the message across in RST-based text generation”. In Current Research in Natural Language Generation. R. Dale, C. Mellish and M. Zonk (eds.). Academic Press, 1990.
H. Thompson. “Strategy and tactics: a model for language production”. In Papers 13th Regional Meeting Chicago Linguistic Society, 1977.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Furtado, A.L., Ciarlini, A.E.M. (2001). Generating Narratives from Plots Using Schema Information. In: Bouzeghoub, M., Kedad, Z., Métais, E. (eds) Natural Language Processing and Information Systems. NLDB 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1959. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45399-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45399-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41943-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45399-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive