Generating Concise Natural Language Summaries

Summaries typically convey maximal information in minimal space. In this paper, we describe an approach to summary generation that opportunistically folds information from multiple facts into a single sentence using concise linguistic constructions. Unlike previous work in generation, how information gets added into a summary depends in part on constraints from how the text is worded so far. This approach allows the construction of concise summaries, containing complex sentences that pack in information. The resulting summary sentences are, in fact, longer than sentences generated by previous systems. We describe two applications we have developed using this approach, one of which produces summaries of basketball games (STREAK) while the other (PLANDOC) produces summaries of telephone network planning activity; both systems summarize input data as opposed to full text. The applications implement opportunistic summary generation using complementary approaches. STREAK uses revision, creating a draft of essential facts and then using revision rules constrained by the draft wording to add in additional facts as the text allows. PLANDOC uses discourse planning, looking ahead in its text plan to group together facts which can be expressed concisely using conjunction and deleting repetitions. In this paper, we describe the problems for summary generation, the two domains, the linguistic constructions that the systems use to convey information concisely and the textual constraints that determine what information gets included.

[1]  David D. McDonald.  Description directed control: its implications for natural language generation , 1986 .

[2]  Owen Rambow,et al.  Applied Text Generation , 1992, ANLP.

[3]  Jerry R. Hobbs.  Ontological Promiscuity , 1985, ACL.

[4]  Mark T. Maybury,et al.  Using Discourse Focus, Temporal Focus, and Spatial Focus to Generate Multisentential Text , 1990, INLG.

[5]  Chris Mellish,et al.  Current research in natural language generation , 1990 .

[6]  Kentaro Inui,et al.  Text Revision: A Model and Its Implementation , 1992, NLG.

[7]  Jacques Robin,et al.  A Revision-Based Generation Architecture for Reporting Facts in their Historical Context , 1993 .

[8]  K. Kukich,et al.  User-Needs Analysis and Design Methodology for an Automated Documentation Generator , 1993 .

[9]  Steven K. Feiner,et al.  Automating the generation of coordinated multimedia explanations , 1991, Computer.

[10]  Alex Lascarides,et al.  Abducing Temporal Discourse , 1992, NLG.

[11]  and K R McKeown,et al.  LANGUAGE GENERATION AND EXPLANATION , 1987 .

[12]  William C. Mann,et al.  Natural Language Generation in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics , 1990 .

[13]  Alain Polguère,et al.  Bilingual Generation of Weather Forecasts in an Operations Environment , 1990, COLING.

[14]  Dietmar Rösner,et al.  The Automated News Agency: SEMTEX — A Text Generator for German , 1987 .

[15]  Harold Borko,et al.  Abstracting Concepts and Methods , 1975 .

[16]  Daniel D. Suthers.  A task‐appropriate hybrid architecture for explanation , 1991 .

[17]  Kathleen R. McKeown,et al.  The need for text generation , 1985 .

[18]  Michael Elhadad,et al.  Using argumentation to control lexical choice: a functional unification implementation , 1993 .

[19]  Kathleen F. McCoy.  The ROMPER System: Responding to Object-Related Misconceptions using Perspective , 1986, ACL.

[20]  Koenraad De Smedt,et al.  IPF: an incremental parallel formulator , 1990 .

[21]  Jacques Robin,et al.  Revision-based generation of natural language summaries providing historical background: corpus-based analysis, design, implementation and evaluation , 1995 .

[22]  Chris D. Paice,et al.  Constructing literature abstracts by computer: Techniques and prospects , 1990, Inf. Process. Manag..

[23]  Cecile Paris,et al.  The use of explicit user models in text generation: tailoring to a user's level of expertise , 1988 .

[24]  Darrin Duford,et al.  crep: a regular expression-matching textual corpus tool , 1993 .

[25]  Thomas Charles Fensch.  The Sports Writing Handbook , 1988 .

[26]  Christian Matthiessen,et al.  Lexico(Grammatical) choice in text generation , 1991 .

[27]  Aravind K. Joshi,et al.  The Relevance of Tree Adjoining Grammar to Generation , 1987 .

[28]  Donia Scott,et al.  Book Reviews: Generating Referring Expressions , 1994, CL.

[29]  Kathleen McKeown,et al.  Tailoring Lexical Choice to the User's Vocabulary in Multimedia Explanation Generation , 1993, ACL.

[30]  Alain Polguère,et al.  Generation of Extended Bilingual Statistical Reports , 1992, COLING.

[31]  I. Mel.  Meaning-Text Models: A Recent Trend in Soviet Linguistics , 1981 .

[32]  Eduard Hovy,et al.  Generating Natural Language Under Pragmatic Constraints , 1988 .

[33]  Ingrid Zukerman,et al.  Comprehension-Driven Generation of Meta-Technical Utterances in Math Tutoring , 1986, AAAI.

[34]  Lisa F. Rau.  Information Retrieval from Never-Ending Stories , 1987, AAAI.

[35]  Johanna D. Moore,et al.  Planning Text for Advisory Dialogues , 1989, ACL.

[36]  Karen Spärck Jones,et al.  Readings in natural language processing , 1986 .

[37]  Ehud Reiter,et al.  A New Model for Lexical Choice for Open-Class Words , 1990, INLG.

[38]  William C. Mann,et al.  An Overview of the Penman Text Generation System , 1983, AAAI.

[39]  George D. Gopen,et al.  The Science of Scientific Writing If the reader is to grasp what the writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs , 1990 .

[40]  Lisa F. Rau,et al.  GE NLToolset: description of the system as used for MUC-4 , 1992, MUC.

[41]  Michael Elhadad,et al.  Controlling Content Realization with Functional Unification Grammars , 1992, NLG.

[42]  Paul S. Jacobs,et al.  PHRED: A Generator for Natural Language Interfaces , 1985, Comput. Linguistics.

[43]  Michael Elhadad,et al.  FUF: the Universal Unifier User Manual Version 5.2 , 1991 .

[44]  Kathleen McKeown,et al.  Corpus Analysis for Revision-Based Generation of Complex Sentences , 1993, AAAI.

[45]  William C. Mann.  Discourse structures for text generation , 1984 .

[46]  Jan Svartvik,et al.  A __ comprehensive grammar of the English language , 1988 .

[47]  Kathleen R. McKeown,et al.  User-Needs Analysis and Design Methodology for an Automated Document Generator , 1994 .

[48]  Marie W. Meteer.  The Implications of Revisions for Natural Language Generation , 1991 .

[49]  Karen Kukich,et al.  Design of a Knowledge-Based Report Generator , 1983, ACL.

[50]  Gail E. Kaiser,et al.  Automated tutoring in interactive environments: a task-centered approach , 1989 .

[51]  Eduard Hovy,et al.  Approaches to the Planning of Coherent Text , 1991 .

[52]  H. B. Allen,et al.  A Functional Grammar , 1946 .

[53]  Eduard H. Hovy,et al.  Integrating Text Planning and Production in Generation , 1985, IJCAI.