A domain-independent natural language database interface

摘要

A domain-independent natural language interface for an existing entity-relationship database management system. Syntactically, it relies on an augmented phrase structure grammar which retains the convenience and efficiency of a semantic grammar while removing some of its ad hoc nature. More precisely, it is a syntactic domain-independent grammar augmented with semantic variables used by the parser to enforce the semantic correctness of a query; these semantic variables are only instantiated by a domain-dependent lexicon. Semantically, the interpretation of a query is in terms of general database navigation operations applied to domain-dependent parameters obtained from the lexicon. These operations apply to a virtual database, made of the actual database schema augmented with derived entity-sets. Navigation operations are eventually translated to acutal database queries.