A Dutch to SQL database interface using Generalized Quantifier Theory

This paper presents the treatment, of quantitication as it was imI)lemented in a prototyl)c of a natural language relational database interface for l)utch 1. It is shown how the theoretical 'generalized (tuantifier' apl ) ; t ra t l t s introduced in formM semantics by Barwise and (]oot)er can be I, uned to irrq)lementational feasi" ( bility. ( ,ompm ~d to the t, raditional tl'(~atl'flellt of (luan tilication, tile alternative l)rcs('nted here offers gre;tl;er ext)ressive l)ower, great,re' similarity to natural language and, as ~t consequoxmo., the possibility o[' a more straighl,forward tral,slation from natural language to tbrmal repres('.ntation. 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N In the prototyl)e at hand, as in many database inter faces, the natural languag(', input is translated go a conventional formal query language, viz. ,qQL, the most widely used and supported of these languages. The resulting SQL queries can then be 1)asscd to an already existing SQL interpreter. The translation i)roccdui:e fi'om Dutch to SQI, is spill, up in two (:OrlSCcutive trl~tior sl,eps, using a logic-based itllierrrlediate sel/la.nLic represellta£ion called GonerM Sem~mtic l{epresentation (GSH.) 2. The functionality of' the whole database interface, including the SQI, interpreter, was seen as a straight, forward implementation of the fornial semantic Montague-style (Montague,197:l) mechamsm of indirect interpretat;ion of natural language (see Fig. 1). T I NI, b . C ~ S l { -~ 1)13 N L i . . . . . + (}~{It . . . . . -q~ S Q I , ~ I )B l!'igure 1: Major processing steps in the I)B interface 'Grafting' tbrmal semantic pro(:essing steps upon ~tn NI, datal)ase interface architecture has 1)een [)r(>l)~1 [u this i>aper the actual iinl)lelnentation is not in focus (see Sl)eelman , 1992). 2 W i L h l n a f r m n e w o r l ¢ o f m a c h i n e I , r ; m s l ; t t i ( m , w e c ; m s a y 1 l l a l , (-ISIt, is a kind of logic-based intcrlingua. gated and (succesflllly) worked out betbre in a some whal, comparable project carried out at the university of l,',ssex (see 1)e Pmeck, Fox, Lowden, Ttlrner gz Walls, 1991). The main concern in that project was to clearly separate domain (-database) dependent semantic intbrmation t?om domain independent semantic information. In the project presented he.re a similar but more general ol/jective was to maximize the separation of the N LI ) data and filnctionality of the system fi:om its purely database oriented data and fimctionality, GSR being the interface structure. 1 3 n t c h q u e s l i o n