Developing a natural language interface for the UNIX operating system

Abstract

Traditional operating system command languages have been shown to cause significant loss of productivity to novice and intermediate computer users when compared with alternative modes of interaction such as direct manipulation, menu selection, and natural language communication. Within the last decade, significant advances in the areas of direct manipulation and menu selection have resulted in the development of user interface management systems. These systems consist of tools for the specification, design, evaluation, and run-time support of graphical user interfaces. Our work extends the domain of user interface management systems to include development of restricted natural language interfaces to operating systems.This report discusses the use of the NALIGE user interface management system int he development of a natural language interface for the Unix operating system. Specifically, the task of developing such an interface is reduced to producing a set of well-formed specifications which describe lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the selected application domain. These specifications are used by NALIGE to construct an autonomous natural language interface which exhibits the desired linguistic and functional behavior.