Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the character of information-seeking interactions between a user and a knowledge base system (KBS). In doing so, I advocate that a clear distinction be made between an answer to a question and a response. The chapter characterizes questions, answers, and responses, the role they play in effective information interchanges, and what is involved in facilitating such interactions between user and KBS.
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
Allen, J., “Recognizing Intentions from Natural Language Utterances”, In M. Brady (editor), Computational Models of Discourse, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1982.
Appelt, D., Planning English Sentences, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge England, 1985.
Brachman, R., Bobrow, R., Cohen, P., Klovstad, J., Webber, B. and Woods, W., “Research in Natural Language Understanding — Annual Report: 1 Sept 78–31 Aug 79”, Technical Report 4274, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., August, 1979.
Bobrow, D.G., Kaplan, R.M., Norman, D.A., Thompson, H. and Winograd, T., “GUS, A Frame-Driven Dialog System”, Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 8, pp. 155–173, 1977.
Bratman, M., “Taking Plans Seriously”, Social Theory and Practice, 9: 271–287, 1983.
Carberry, S., “A Pragmatics-based Approach to Understanding Intersentential Ellipses”, Proc. of the 23rd Annual Meeting, pages 188–197. Association for Computational Linguistics, University of Chicago, Chicago IL, July, 1985.
Cassell, E.J., Talking with Patients, Volume I: The Theory of Doctor Patient Communication, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1985.
Cheikes, B., “Monitor Offers on a Dynamic Database: The search for relevance”, Technical Report CIS-85-43, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, October, 1985.
Conklin, J. and McDonald, D., “Salience: the key to the selection problem in natural language generation”, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting, pages 129–135. Assoc. for Computational Linguistics, University of Toronto, June, 1982.
Cohen, P., “On Knowing What to Say: Planning Speech Acts”, Technical Report 118, Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, January, 1978.
Corella, F., “Semantic Retrieval and Levels of Abstraction”, In L. Kerschberg (editor), Expert Database Systems, Benjamin Cummings, New York, 1985.
Davis, R., “Interactive Transfer of Expertise”, Artificial Intelligence, 12 (2): 121–157, 1979.
Gazdar, G., “A Solution to the Projection Problem”, in Oh, C.-K. and Dinneen, D. (editors), Syntax and Semantics, pages 57–90. Academic Press, New York, 1979.
Goldman, A., A Theory of Human Action, Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1970.
Grewendorf, G., “What Answers can be Given?”, in F. Kiefer (editor), Questions and Answers, pages 45–84. D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983.
Grice, H. P., “Logic and Conversation”, in P. Cole and J.L. Morgan (editors), Syntax and Semantics, Academic Press, New York, 1975.
Hasling, D., Clancey, W. and Rennels, G., “Strategic Explanations for a Diagnostic Consultation System”, Intl J. of Man-Machine Studies, 20:3–20, January, 1984.
Hirschberg, J., “Scalar Implicature”, PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, December, 1985.
Hollan, J., Hutchines, E. and Weitzman, L., “STEAMER: An Interactive Inspectable Simulation-based Training System”, AI Magazine, 5 (2): 15–28, Summer, 1984.
Hobbs, J. and Robinson, J., “Why Ask?”, Discourse Processes, 2, 1979.
Joshi, A.K., “Mutual Beliefs in Question Answering Systems”, in N. Smith (editor), Mutual Belief Academic Press, New York, 1982.
Joshi, A., Webber, B. and Weischedel, R., “Preventing False Inferences”, Proceedings ofCOLlNG-84, Stanford CA, July, 1984.
Joshi, A., Webber, B. and Weischedel, R., “Living Up to Expectations: Computing Expert Responses”, Proceedings of AAAI-84, Austin TX, August, 1984.
Joshi, A., Webber, B. and Weischedel, R., “Default Reasoning in Interaction”, Proceedings of 1984 Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning, AAAI, Menlo Park CA, October, 1984.
Kaplan, J., “Cooperative Responses from a Portable Natural Language Database Query System”, M. Brady (editor), Computational Models of Discourse, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1982.
Kellogg, C. and Travis, L., “Reasoning with Data in a Deductively Augmented Data Management System”, H. Gallaire (editor), Advances in Data Bases, pages 261–295. Plenum Press, 1981.
Lang, K., Auld, R. and Lang, T., “The Goals and Methods of Computer Users”, Int. J. Man-Machine Studies, 17: 375–399, 1982.
Lehnert, W., “A Computational Theory of Human Question Answering”, A. Joshi, B. Webber and I. Sag (editors), Elements of Discourse Understanding, chapter 6, pages 145–176. Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Levesque, H., “Foundations of a Functional Approach to Representation”, Artificial Intelligence, 23 (2): 155–212, July, 1984.
Levinson, S., Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge England, 1983.
Mays, E., “Failures in natural language systems: application to data base query systems”, flProc. First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Stanford CA, August, 1980.
Mays, E., “A Modal Temporal Logic for Reasoning about Change”, Proc. 1983 Assoc. for Computational Linguistics Conference, Cambridge MA, June, 1983.
Mays, E., “A Temporal Logic for Reasoning about Changing Data Bases in the Context of Natural Language Question-Answering”, In L. Kerschberg (editor), Expert Database Systems, New York: Benjamin Cummings, 1985.
McCoy, K., “Correcting Misconceptions: What to Say”, CHI’83 Conference Human Factors in Computing Systems, Cambridge MA, December, 1983.
McCoy, K., “Correcting Object-related Misconceptions”, Technical Report MS-CIS-85-57, University of Pennsylvania, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, 1985. Ph.D. Thesis.
McKeown, K., Text Generation: Using Discourse Strategies and Focus Constraints to Generate Natural Language Text, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1985.
McKeown, K., Wish, M. and Matthews, K., “Tailoring Explanations for the User”, Proceedings of the 1985 Conference, Int’l Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Los Angeles CA, August, 1985.
Moore, R., “Reasoning about Knowledge and Action”, Technical Report 191, SRI International, 1980.
Moore, R.C., “A Formal Theory of Knowledge and Action”, in R.C. Moore and J. Hobbs (editor), Formal Theories of the Commonsense World, Ablex Publishing, Norwood NJ, 1984.
Mercer, R. and Rosenberg, R., “Generating Corrective Answers by Computing Presuppositions of Answers, not of Questions”, Proceedings of the 1984 Conference, pp. 16–19. Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, May, 1984.
Pollack, M., “Information Sought and Information Provided”, Proceedings of CHI’85, pages 155–160. Assoc. for Computing Machinery (ACM), San Francisco CA, April, 1985.
Reiter, R., Deductive Q-A on Relational Databases, In [GM781].
Reiter, R., On Closed World Databases, In [GM781].
Rissland, E., Valcarce, E. and Ashley, K., “Explaining and Arguing with Examples”, Proceedings of the Natl. Conf. on Art. Intelligence, pages 288–294. AAAI-84, University of Texas at Austin, August, 1984.
Sadock, J., “Modus Brevis: The Truncated Argument”, Proceedings of the 1977 Meeting, pages 545–554. Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago IL, 1977.
Schank, R., Conceptual Information Processing, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1975.
Sergot, M., “A Query-the-User Facility for Logic Programming”, P. Degano and E. Sandewall (editor), Integrated Interactive Computing Systems, pages 27–41. North-Holland, 1983.
Swartout, W., “XPLAIN: A System for Creating and Explaining Expert Consulting Programs”, Artificial Intelligence, 21: 285–325, 1983.
Trillin, C., Killings, Ticknor and Fields, New York City, 1984.
Walker, A., “Automatic Generation of Explanations of Results from Knowledge Bases”, Technical Report RJ3481, IBM San Jose Research Laboratory, May, 1982.
Weiner, J., “BLAH, A System which explains its Reasoning”, Artificial Intelligence, 15: 19–48, 1980.
Winograd, T., Understanding Natural Language, Addison-Wesley, New York, 1972.
Wahlster, W., Marburger, H., Jameson, A. and Busemann, S., “Over-Answering Yes-No Questions: Extended responses in a NL interface to a vision system”, Proceedings of the 8th IJCA1, pages 643–646. IJCAI, Karlsruhe, West Germany, August, 1983.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1986 Springer-Verlag
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Webber, B.L. (1986). Questions, Answers and Responses: Interacting with Knowledge-Base Systems. In: Brodie, M.L., Mylopoulos, J. (eds) On Knowledge Base Management Systems. Topics in Information Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4980-1_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4980-1_30
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-9383-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-4980-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive