The Nature of Generalization in Understanding

True understanding of natural language text requires the inclusion of generalization and longterm memory. This paper describes the generalization • process and! memory used in the Integrated Part ial Parser (IPP), a computer program that reads and remembers news s tor ies . The need for generalization and generalization-based memory as an integral part of understanding natural language text is i l lus t ra ted with examples from IPP. In addi t ion, the nature of generalization is discussed. A l l of these generalizations were made by a computer program, IPP (the Integrated Part ial Parser), a complete understanding system that reads and remembers stories from newspapers and the UPI news wire. The generalizations made, besides being interesting observations about the world, provide useful information for text processing and the organizing memory of events. Indeed, to have a computer system that understands in as powerful fashion and over as wide a range of texts as do people it is necessary for the system to have a dynamic, generalization-based memory that can be accessed during understanding*