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Querying databases with a domain-oriented natural language understanding system

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Abstract

This paper presents the DONAU (Domain Oriented NAtural language Understanding) system. The system can extract, from a sentence expressed in natural language, the useful information that is necessary in order to provide either an appropriate command for a robot or an acceptable query to a database system. The DONAU system, being adapted for such different versions, is intended to provide a contribution of quite general significance in the field of natural language understanding and within the general area of artificial intelligence. In fact, while a first version of DONAU, which has been developed and successfully tested on UNIVAC 1108 computer, is devoted to the semantic domain of robotics, a second DONAU version for querying databases has been constructed. Thus, the DONAU architecture has been conceived and developed in order to provide an experimental and formalizable result that is of general value, and that therefore can be applied to semantic domains of a different type as well.

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A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the IIASA Workshop on Natural Language for Interaction with Data Bases, Laxenburg Schloss, Austria, January 1977.

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Bernorio, M., Bertoni, M., Dabbene, A. et al. Querying databases with a domain-oriented natural language understanding system. International Journal of Computer and Information Sciences 9, 141–159 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00982293

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00982293

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