An Application of Automated Language Understanding Techniques to the Generation of Data Base Elements

This paper defines a methodology for automatically analyzing textual reports of events and synthesizing event data elements from the reports for automated input to a data base. The long-term goal of the work described is to develop a support technology for spec i f i c analytical functions related to the evaluation of daily message t ra f f ic in a mi l i tary environment. The approach taken leans heavily on theoretical ad-' vances in several disciplines, including l inguist ics, computational l inguist ics, a r t i f i c i a l intell igence, and cognitive psychology. The aim is to model the cognitive act iv i t ies of the human analyst as he reads and understands message text, d i s t i l l i ng i ts contents into information items of interest to him, and building a conceptual model of the information conveyed by the message. This methodology, although developed on the basis of a restricted subject domain, is presumed to be general, and extensible to other domains.