Cecile Balkanski. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1993. Available as Technical Report TR-16-93, Center for Research in Computing Technology.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....Pittsburgh. PA 15260 myoung pitt.edu Introduction Knowledge representation schemes for the automatic generation of action related natural language must account for the relationships commonly described in naturally occurring text. Previous work representing action in task related discourse [13, 6, 1] has used a representation based on Goldman s [8] work in the philosophy of action. These approaches have been successful in accounting for text describing the relationships between two steps, but when viewed in the context of the plan in which those steps are embedded, their representation can ....

....and communication about the plan. An action representation that can describe incomplete or incorrect nature of plans and the process used to correct or complete them is essential. 1 Previous Work: Generation and Enablement Previous work in action representation for task related discourse [14, 1, 5] has focused on describing relationships that hold between a pair of actions. Specifically, they have dealt almost exclusively with two such relationships: generation and enablement. Informally, enablement is the relation that holds between two actions when one action establishes conditions needed ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Cecile Balkanski. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, Harvard University, May 1994.

....revolves around the balance between coherence and control. In order for a user to understand an action sequence as an unfolding storyline, she must be able to view the actions as a coherent plot where one action is related to another in temporal sequence based on some rules of nar rative (e.g. (Balkanski 1993)) much like adjacent utterances in a natural language discourse must be coherently related to one another to be comprehensible (Hobbs 1985; Mann and Thompson 1992) In order for a user to feel immersed within a virtual environment, she must feel that she has substantive control of her character ....

Balkanski, Cecile 1993. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, Harvard University.

....can occur in both cases, as long as the instructor intends the agent to recognize such relation. Generation is a relation between actions that has been extensively studied, first in philosophy (Goldman, 1970) and then in discourse analysis (Allen, 1984) Pollack, 1986) Grosz and Sidner, 1990) (Balkanski, 1993). Intuitively, if ff generates fi, executing ff in appropriate circumstances is all that is required to achieve fi. This is formalized (see e.g. Pollack, 1986; Balkanski, 1993) by requiring that 1. ff and fi be simultaneous, where simultaneity has to be strictly interpreted to exclude cases in ....

....in philosophy (Goldman, 1970) and then in discourse analysis (Allen, 1984) Pollack, 1986) Grosz and Sidner, 1990) Balkanski, 1993) Intuitively, if ff generates fi, executing ff in appropriate circumstances is all that is required to achieve fi. This is formalized (see e.g. Pollack, 1986; Balkanski, 1993)) by requiring that 1. ff and fi be simultaneous, where simultaneity has to be strictly interpreted to exclude cases in which ff is part of doing fi; 2. when ff occurs, a set of conditions C hold, such that the joint occurrence of ff and C entail the occurrence of fi. If C doesn t hold, ff may ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Balkanski, Cecile. 1993. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University. Technical Report TR-16-93.

....the concept of the letter itself. 3 Note that bringing about is not causation. For example the act of turning on a light brings about the state of the light being on (the effect) whereas that effect is caused by another action: the flipping of the switch. 4 This notion is closely related to Balkanski s (1993) definition of executability condition. 38 GIST: RA 1 Actions States Skip(field) Possessed(paper) Constraint Effect Sub Action Sub Action Precondition Known(NI#) Learn(NI#) Effect Enter(NI#) Filled in(NI#) Effect Dealt With(field) Deal With(field) Sub Action Goal Goal Goal Goal ....

Balkanski, C. T. (1993). Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. PhD thesis, Harvard University.

....not automatically result in a test. Example 4, from the instructions for a home photographic slide viewer, presents the enablED action prolonged viewing first, and describes to the user what must be done to facilitate it. These two relations have been formalised by Pollack [Pollack1986] and Balkanski [Balkanski1993] for the purposes of plan recognition, and can be represented in a plan formalism that is a simple extension of STRIPS styled operators developed by Fikes and Nilsson [Fikes and Nilsson1971] and expanded in the NOAH system [Sacerdoti1977] Here, we summarise the two relations in the form of the ....

Cecile T. Balkanski. 1993. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in MultiAction Utterances. Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, May.

....Among the possible relations that can exist between pairs of actions in a plan, two have attracted particular interest within the AI community: generation and enablement. Originally identified by the philosopher Goldman (1970) these relations have been formally specified by Pollack (1986) and Balkanski (1993). A simple test of generation holding between action pairs is whether it can be said that by performing one of the actions (ff) the other (fi) will automatically occur (Pollack, 1986) If this is the case, it can be said that ff generates fi. Here are some canonical examples of this relation, ....

....is required. Goldman does not provide a formal definition of this enablement, but Pollack (1986, page 40) gives a useful definition: when ff enables fi, then the agent needs to do something more than ff to guarantee that fi will be done. A more detailed definition is provided by Balkanski (1993, page 41) Action A 1 enables action A 3 if and only if there is a set of conditions, C, such that one of the conditions in C, C i , holds as a result of the performance of A 1 , and either there is a third action A 2 such that A 2 conditionally generates A 3 under C, or C is the ....

Balkanski, Cecile T. 1993. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. Ph.D.

....determinable from the given instruction alone. An (incremental) plan can then be formulated to comply with both the explicit and implicit contraints on the procedure and its intended result. 2 There are, of course, other linguistic means of conveying purpose free adjuncts [52] means clauses [7, 8], and even simple conjunction [24] Moreover, clauses that convey purpose do serve other functions as well, such as making an action description easier to understand [22, 23] or justifying why an action should be done [8] Our point here is simply that any linguistic specification of goals ....

.... linguistic means of conveying purpose free adjuncts [52] means clauses [7, 8] and even simple conjunction [24] Moreover, clauses that convey purpose do serve other functions as well, such as making an action description easier to understand [22, 23] or justifying why an action should be done [8]. Our point here is simply that any linguistic specification of goals (purpose clauses being a clear example) can serve, like the environment, as the context in which an underspecified action description can be elaborated and thereby correctly understood. Our second example is intended to show ....

Balkanski, C. T. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-action Utterances. PhD thesis, Harvard University, June 1993.

....and enablement . Intuitively, generation holds between ff and fi if fi is done by executing ff; enablement holds between ff and fi if ff brings about conditions necessary to execute fi. Generation and enablement are pervasive in NL text, especially in NL instructions see [ Pollack, 1986; Balkanski, 1993; Di Eugenio, 1993 ] 4 Proposed Solution To address these issues, I have devised and implemented a formalism composed of two KBs. The first, the action taxonomy , stores linguistic knowledge about actions, the second, the plan library , contains action recipes [ Pollack, 1986; Balkanski, 1993 ....

....Balkanski, 1993; Di Eugenio, 1993 ] 4 Proposed Solution To address these issues, I have devised and implemented a formalism composed of two KBs. The first, the action taxonomy , stores linguistic knowledge about actions, the second, the plan library , contains action recipes [ Pollack, 1986; Balkanski, 1993 ] i.e. common sense planning knowledge about actions. To guarantee that the representation of actions is linguistically motivated, action terms are defined by composing them out of Conceptual Structures [ Jackendoff, 1990 ] types, such as thing, path, place, event, and primitives, e.g. go, ....

Cecile Balkanski. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1993. Technical Report TR-1693.

....addition, because the Apprentice and Expert are both 13 This rule and the one to follow extend Grosz and Sidner s (1990) original conversational default rule, CDR1. 14 The predicate occurs(fi) is true if fi was, is, or will be performed at the time associated with fi as one of its parameters (Balkanski, 1993). 15 We have left out the time parameter for simplicity of exposition, and will continue to do so when it is not at issue. aware that the Apprentice does not have the necessary expertise to perform the action himself, the Apprentice can assume that the Expert must believe the agents can ....

....be taken to play a role in the recipe of the agents plan. We thus do not deal with utterances concerning warnings (e.g. Whatever you do, do not press the red button ) or utterances involving multiple actions that are related in particular ways (e.g. To reset the printer, flip the switch. (Balkanski, 1993)) All of the utterances in the example dialogues of Chapter 1 match this restricted form, however. Step (5ci) The Contributes Relation As with the other cases of Step (5) Step (i) of Case (c) involves ascribing a particular belief to agent G 2 regarding the relationship of her utterance to the ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Balkanski, C. T. 1993. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances.

....an agent has to do to understand them. Moreover, my analysis, by showing that purpose clauses express generation or enablement between the actions described in the main clause and in the purpose clause respectively, lends support to the proposal, made in [Pollack, 1986; Balkanski, 1992a; Balkanski, 1993] that such two relations should be used in modeling actions. My analysis of negative imperatives is much more limited in scope: I have classified negative imperatives into two subtypes, and shown that they correlate with different discourse functions. The analysis of the computational ....

...., and that goals guide this computation; ffl finally, I suggest specific characteristics for the action representation formalism. In fact, purpose clauses appear to express generation or enablement, supporting the proposal, made by [Allen, 1984] Pollack, 1986] Grosz and Sidner, 1990] [Balkanski, 1993], that these two relations are necessary to model actions. The main aim of this chapter is to describe the relations between actions that purpose clauses express, and the inference processes that their interpretation requires. I will conclude by describing the consequences of these data for my ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Cecile Balkanski. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1993. Technical Report TR-16-93.

No context found.

Cecile Balkanski. Actions, Beliefs and Intentions in Multi-Action Utterances. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1993. Available as Technical Report TR-16-93, Center for Research in Computing Technology.

Online articles have much greater impact   More about CiteSeer.IST   Add search form to your site   Submit documents   Feedback  

CiteSeer.IST - Copyright Penn State and NEC