Natural language in a desktop environment
Marilyn A. Walker · 1989
Different modes of interaction are better suited for different tasks and both natural language and direct manipulation have strengths and weaknesses as interface technologies. Previous studies in the evaluation of interactive natural language interfaces have noted certain benefits of natural language access to information, but have neglected to describe the features of natural language that provides these benefits. We have identified a set of communicative features of natural language, such as quantification and discourse reference, that are difficult to support with direct manipulation. The analysis has implications for determining the tasks in a personal information environment that natural language is suited for. 1 Introduction In the human-computer communication community, some have touted natural language interaction (NLI) as a critical component of future interfaces. They assume, in the main, that some users cannot or will not learn a formal method of interacting with a system; ...