Re: [FWP] Natural language processing

[David Glasser <glasser@iname.com>]

>> 2000-04-25-20:37:20 Jeff Boes:
>> > Has there been any natural langauge parser work done, that's
>> > publicly available?
>
>How about the old Infocom Z-machine interpreter, used to write text
>adventure games ?  There are actually games still being written in it, and
>new interpreters for the language.

Some more general information about that could be found at
http://www.davidglasser.net/raiffaq/

The current Inform (which compiles to the ZMachine) parser can be found in
the Inform library
(ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library); it's the
only IF language whose parser is separate from the interpreter

But really, IF (interactive fiction) parsers aren't anywhere near natural
language; this is regarded as a good thing.  A typical question on
rec.arts.int-fiction is "Why hasn't anyone implemented adverbs?"; the
answer is that having "DROP VASE" break it but require "DROP VASE
CAUTIOUSLY" to have it work properly would be annoying for the player.  The
fact that IF parsers are so restrictive allows users to know when what they
are trying is the wrong idea instead of the wrong phrasing.

In addition, much of the work in an IF parser involves disambiguating based
on information in the game world, which isn't relevant to generic. queries.

(Not that IF parsers haven't advanced since the days of Infocom, of course.)

--David Glasser
(By the way, I've been missing lots of posts to this list, especially those
that start threads.  Is it just me?

glasser@iname.com



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