Time-dependent generation of minimal sets of spatial descriptions
Anselm Blocher, E. Stopp · 1998
Talking about a location within a geometrically represented environment implies the translation of coordinates into suitable natural language expressions. Therefore, a reference semantics anchored in the given geometry has to be developed in order to be able to describe spatial relations between objects. Answering the question "Where is object X?" will lead to a large set of spatial propositions like "X is near Y", "X is to the right of Z" etc. Aiming for a description of the specified location which is both easily understood and highly informative for a human being, the elements of this set must be analysed with respect to the degrees of applicability, compatibility, uniqueness and facility to be memorized. Furthermore, the actual context as well as presumptions about the user's knowledge must be taken into account. Usually, in dialog situations it is a priori unknown how much time is given for the generation of an utterance. We therefore demonstrate a first approach of applying anyti...