Progress in natural language understanding: an application to lunar geology

The advent of computer networks such as the ARPA net (see e.g., Ornstein et al.) has significantly increased the opportunity for access by a single researcher to a variety of different computer facilities and data bases, thus raising expectations of a day when it will be a common occurrence rather than an exception that a scientist will casually undertake to use a computer facility located 3000 miles away and whose languages, formats, and conventions are unknown to him. In this foreseeable future, learning and remembering the number of different languages and conventions that such a scientist would have to know will require significant effort---much greater than that now required to learn the conventions of his local computing center (where other users and knowledgeable assistance is readily available). The Lunar Sciences Natural Language Information System (which we will hereafter refer to as LUNAR) is a research prototype of a system to deal with this and other man-machine communication problems by adapting the machine to the conventions of ordinary natural English rather than requiring the man to adapt to the machine.