Using English For Indexing and Retrieving

This paper describes a natural language system START. The system analyzes English text and automatically transforms it into an appropriate representation, the knowledge base, which incorporates the information found in the text. The user gains access to information stored in the knowledge base by querying it in English. The system analyzes the query and decides through a matching process what information in the knowledge base is relevant to the question. Then it retrieves this information and formulates its response also in English.

Natural Language Syntax and First Order Preference

We have argued elsewhere that first order inference can be made more efficient by using non-standard syntax for first order logic. In this paper we show how a fragment of English syntax under Montague semantics provides the foundation of a new inference procedure. This procedure seems more effective than corresponding procedures based on either classical syntax of our previously proposed taxonomic syntax. This observation may provide a functional explanation for some of the syntactic structure of English.