A system for natural language sentence generation

This paper describes a natural language generation system known as VINCI, which accepts as input a formal description of some subset of a natural language, and generates strings in the language. With the help of an attribute grammar formalism, the system can be used to simulate on a computer components of several current linguistic theories. The program, implemented in C, runs under a variety of operating systems, including UNIX, MS-DOS and VM/CMS. In this paper we consider not only the design of the system, but also some of its applications in linguistic modelling and second language acquisition research.Gregory Lessard is an associate professor in the French Studies Department at Queen's University at Kingston. His research interests include natural language generation and modelling, second language acquisition and computer-aided text analysis.

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