Pursuing the Goal of Language Understanding
Abstract: Abstract. No human being can understand every text or dialog in his or her native language, and no
one should expect a computer to do so. However, people have a remarkable ability to learn and to
extend their understanding without explicit training. Fundamental to human understanding is the
ability to learn and use language in social interactions that Wittgenstein called language games.
Those language games use and extend prelinguistic knowledge learned through perception, action,
and social interactions. This article surveys the technology developed for natural language processing
and the successes and failures of various attempts. Although many useful applications have been
implemented, the original goal of language understanding seems as remote as ever. Fundamental to
understanding is the ability to recognize an utterance as a move in a social game and to respond in
terms of a mental model of the game, the players, and the environment. Those models use and extend
the prelinguistic models learned through perception, action, and social interactions. Secondary uses of
language, such as reading a book, are derivative processes that elaborate and extend the mental models
originally acquired by interacting with people and the environment. A computer system that relates
language to virtual models might mimic some aspects of understanding, but full understanding requires
the ability to learn and use new knowledge in social and sensory-motor interactions. These issues are
illustrated with an analysis of some NLP systems and a recommended strategy for the future. None of
the systems available today can understand language at the level of a child, but with a shift in strategy
there is hope of designing more robust and usable systems in the future.
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