VIE-GEN: a generator for German texts

VIE-GEN is a generator that produces German text from a semantic representation. It is a component of the German language dialogue system VIE-LANG [2], implemented in INTERLISP. The input to VIE-GEN is part of the episodic layer of the semantic network SEMNET, its outputs are German sentences. The generator is not restricted to single sentences, it contains features for creating coherent structures (e.g. generation of anaphora and gapping). VIE-GEN is designed to suit the idiosyncracies of the German language: it is able to produce various alternative word orderings (in German word order is not as strict as e.g. in English), it considers syntactic differences between main clauses and dependent ones and it is able to correctly produce all inflectional forms being found in German.