Natural Language User Interfaces (LUI) are a type of computer human interface where linguistic phenomenon such as verbs, phrases, and clauses act as UI controls for creating, selecting, and modifying data in software applications.
In interface design natural language interfaces are sought after for their speed and ease of use, but most suffer the challenges to understanding wide varieties of ambiguous input.[1] Natural language interfaces are an active area of study in the field of natural language processing and Computational linguistics. An intuitive general Natural language interface is one of the active goals of the Semantic Web.
It is important to note that text interfaces are 'natural' to varying degrees, and that many formal (un-natural) programming languages incorporate idioms of natural human language.
History
Prototype Nl interfaces had already appeared in the late sixties and early seventies. [2]
- Lunar, a natural language interface to a database containing chemical analyses of moon rocks.
- Chat-80 transformed English questions into Prolog expressions,
which were evaluated against the Prolog database. The code of Chat-80 was circulated widely, and formed the basis of several other experimental Nl interfaces.
- Janus is also one of the few systems to support temporal questions.
- Intellect from Trinzic (formed by the merger of AICorp and Aion).
- Bbn’s Parlance built on experience from the development of the Rus and Irus systems.
• Ibm’s Languageaccess • Q&A from Symantec. • Datatalker from Natural Language Inc. • Loqui from Bim. • English Wizard from Linguistic Technology Corporation.
Modern Applications
Ubiquity
{{main|Ubiquity (Firefox)]]
Wolfram Alpha
Siri
Others
See also
- ^ Hill, I. (1983). "Natural language versus computer language." In M. Sime and M. Coombs (Eds.) Designing for Human-Computer Communication. Academic Press.
- ^ Natural Language Interfaces to Databases – An Introduction, I. Androutsopoulos, G.D. Ritchie, P. Thanisch, Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh