Collocational Grammar As A Model For Human-Computer Interaction

C o n t r a r y t o the l o n g h e l d b e l i e f o f t r a n s f o ~ n a t i o n a l E~mmar i ans f o r communica t ion i n g e n e r a l , t he m a j o r i t y c f natural languaEe sentences which people actually use in oomm u n i c a t i n g w i t h a c o ~ p u t e r , i n an u n c o n s t r a i n e d mode, a r e no t n o v e l . As Thompson and Thompson 1981s660 obselwez "monotony o f s t r u c t u r e i s t h e r u l e r a t h e ~ than the e x c e p t i o n i n homancompute r communica t ion . " Thompson 1981"41 r e p o r t s i n h e r study of such communications that 75 percent of the queries were w h q u e s t i o n s , 1% p e r c e n t were commands, 5 p e r c e n t were s t a t e m e n t s , and 1 p e r c e n t were y e s / n o q u e s t i o n s . The r e p e t i t i v e f e a t u r e o f n a t u r a l l anguage i s not a new c o n c e p t . S i m i l a r o b s e r v a t i o n s have been made b s f o r e o Damerau 1971 used c o l l o c a t i o n o f l e x i o a l i t e m s as t he b a s i s f o r a Marker model i n an expe r imen t f o r t e x t g e n e r a t i o n . B e c k e t c l a i m s t h a t " t h e w o n d e r f u l f e a t s o f t h e homan i n t e l l e c t . . , a r e based as much on m e m o r i z a t i o n as on any impromptu p rob l em-solving" (1975:62). He posits a phrasal lexicon oonslstln~ of six major categories of lexioal phrases by which we "stitch t c g e t h e r swatches o f t e x t t h a t we have hear~ b e f o r e | p r o d u c t i v e p r o c e s s e s have t h e s e c o n d a r y r o l e o f a d a p t i n g the o l d phrases to the new situations" (1975z60)o All of these approaches to natural languaEe data rely heavily on the observation that many lexlcal items tend