The concept of information as it is used in ordinary discourse is elucidated, using philosophical methods of conceptual analysis. Five essential and four derivative properties of the phenomena of information are identified. This information concept is contrasted with several proposed concepts in information theory literature, communication theory,…

Discussion of discourse modeling in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics focuses on a dialog model that incorporates the illocutionary aspects of information-seeking dialogs. The relevance of a theory developed for the analysis of written texts--Rhetorical Structure Theory--is explained, and future work is discussed. (25…

Describes a prototype natural language text knowledge system (TKS) that was used to organize 50 pages of a handbook on artificial intelligence as an inferential knowledge base with natural language query and command capabilities. Representation of text, database navigation, query systems, discourse structuring, and future research needs are…

Describes a computational model of the human process of generating text. The system design and generation process are discussed with particular attention to domain independence and cross language portability. The results of system tests are presented, the generator is evaluated with respect to current generators, and future directions are…

Investigates whether information abstracts reporting on empirical work possess a predictable discourse-level structure and whether there are lexical clues revealing this structure. Results support the presence of a detectable structure in the text-type of empirical abstracts, which may be of use in a variety of text-based information processing…