Building Conceptual Dictionary for Providing Common Knowledge in the Integrated Narrative Generation System

Building Conceptual Dictionary for Providing Common Knowledge in the Integrated Narrative Generation System Kensuke Oishi (g231g010@s.iwate-pu.ac.jp) Graduate School of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University, 152-52 Sugo Takizawa, Iwate 020-0193 Japan Yasunari Kurisawa (g031g054@s.iwate-pu.ac.jp) Faculty of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University Mami Kamada (g031i301@s.iwate-pu.ac.jp) Faculty of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University Itaru Fukuda (g031h134@s.iwate-pu.ac.jp) Faculty of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University Taisuke Akimoto (g236i001@s.iwate-pu.ac.jp) Graduate School of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University Takashi Ogata (t-ogata@iwate-pu.ac.jp) Faculty of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University Abstract We explain the current version of a conceptual dictionary containing two hierarchies of verb concepts and noun con- cepts to be functioned in our narrative generation system. It is used for operating naturalness or validity of generated events and realizing or adjusting the intentional defamiliarization. Namely, this dictionary is a mechanism to be able to flexibly adjust a variety of generation from realistic narratives to fan- tastical narratives as well as the foundation for a narrative event and the elements. In the current version, verb concept dictionary has originally defined 5338 case frames and modi- fied 1158 constraints and noun concept dictionary contains 121573 concepts including 5808 intermediate concepts. Keywords: Narrative generation system; conceptual dictionary; verb/noun concept hierarchy; case frame; constraint. Introduction This paper explains the development of a conceptual dictionary or hierarchical systems of concepts in the narrative generation system framework which is our main research theme. A basic unit for a narrative in the system is an event concept containing a verb concept and noun concepts and the information of these concepts is held in the conceptual dictionary. It is one of the central components in the system. Narrative is the strongest method for organizing fragmentary knowledge human being has. We have been developing a nar- rative generation system as an intelligence tool for the creation of future literature & narrative (Ogata & Kanai, 2010). For digital art and entertainment such as computer game, perhaps narrative and story can become an important element in the same manner as traditional genres. Our research of narrative genera- tion is done for the application to novel contents such as comput- er game and narrative generation based narrative or literature. As a related work, Okada and Endo (1992) proposed a sys- tem to generate stories like Aesop fables. A story generated is a kind of simulation of the process that a main character or actor plots a sequence of planning actions. In contrast, our narrative generation system architecture is constructed as an organic fusion of diverse narrative knowledge and techniques including planning, discourse structure, story grammar, script, discourse relation, and so on. Although the Aesop system has a feature as an application of conceptual dictionary research, our goal of the narrative generation system is pursuing the mechanism of nar- rative generation itself. Our extreme purpose is not developing conceptual dictionary itself, but creating narrative generation system. Therefore, a basic policy here is to use existing diction- aries as possible to customize and expand them according to the architecture and mechanism. As a narrative generation study, Oz project (Bates, 1992) at- tempted the development of an interactive drama with dialogue and actions in autonomous agents. This system mainly focuses on the interactive techniques for the user’s narrative experi- ments. In contrast, our system contains a variety of narrative and linguistic knowledge for generating deep and conceptual narrative structures. On the other hand, BRUTUS (Bringsjord & Ferrucci, 2000) is an interactive narrative generation archi- tecture which has an integrative feature including story gram- mar, planning, and so on. However, it deals with only a special- ized narrative theme, “betrayal”. Whereas, we are intend to de- velop a more general mechanism for various types of narratives. The goal of this paper is the proposition of a conceptual dic- tionary in the narrative generation system architecture we have been developing. The conceptual dictionary has two compo- nents of verb concept dictionary and noun concept dictionary and each system has a hierarchical structure based on single inheritance. A main issue in the development of conceptual dictionary is currently defining constraints, which means the knowledge for deciding the range of value for each case in an event as a basic unit in a narrative. A constraint is described in a verb concept and prescribes the possible range of noun con- cepts. In this paper, we describe the whole structure and some detailed parts of the conceptual dictionary by especially putting a focus on the description and role of constraints. Although this paper uses existing studies of conceptual dictionaries as a refer- ence, in the combination with the domain of narrative genera- tion system, a variety of novel and difficult issues emerges. For