Integrated Natural Language Generation Systems

Many existing natural language generation systems can be characterized according to their modularization as either pipelined or interleaved. In these separated systems, the generator is divided into several modules (e.g., planning and realization), with control and information passing between themodules during the generation process. This paper proposes a third type of generator, which we call integrated, that unifies the modules into a single mechanism. The mechanism uses a small set of orthogonal basic operations to produce planned and grammatical language output. Integrated systems are conceptually attractive and may support generation of pragmatic effects more effectively than other systems. After discussing the advantages of the integrated approach, we summarize GLINDA, an integrated generator currently under development at Carnegie Mellon. GLINDA is the generator used for narration and intercharacter communication in the Oz Interactive Fiction and Virtual Reality Project.