Natural Language Access To Structured Text

This paper d i s c u s s e s the problem of p r o v i d i n g n a t u r a l l anguage access to textual material. We are developing a system that r e l a t e s a r e q u e s t i n E n g l i s h to s p e c i f i c p a s s a g e s i n a document on the b a s i s of co r respondences between the l o g i c a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s of the i n f o r m a t i o n i n the r e q u e s t and i n the p a s s a g e s . In a d d i t i o n , we a r e d e v e l o p i n g p rocedures f o r a u t o m a t i c a l l y g e n e r a t i n g l o g i c a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s of t e x t p a s s a g e s , d i r e c t l y from the t e x t , by means of an a n a l y s i s of t he coherence s t r u c t u r e of the p a s s a g e s .