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<Paper uid="A88-1001">
  <Title>The Multimedia Articulation of Answers in a Natural Language Database Query System</Title>
  <Section position="8" start_page="2" end_page="2" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Obviously there is much ground to be covered in the areas of natural language communication and conversational human/computer interfaces. Yet interim applications can be built which are incrementally improved over previous ones. This approach is necessary in order to observe real users of these systems.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The domain independent articulation strategy presented here enables two very different database query systems to present answers conversationally. Generality is achieved through the use of answer type keywords (provided by the application driver) and the illocutionary act of the query (provided by the parser). From this information, multimedia answers are assembled and templates in which to frame the textual answer are constructed from the input query.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Although it lacks inferencing ability, the articulator described here provides several features desirable in a cooperative interface. These features include answers presented in a style that parallels the user's question, extended answers, the ability to refer deictically to an image, and explicit feedback regarding co-specifiers of personal pronouns.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Finally, multimedia articulation provides serendipitous opportunities for dispersing ambiguity, due to multiple representation of the answer. Take the following query to our Van Gogh database: &amp;quot;Show me the pictures of Van Gogh that he didn't paint.&amp;quot; The textual answer came back: &amp;quot;The pictures of Van Gogh that Van Gogh didn't paint are Vincent Painting and Self-Portrait.&amp;quot; As we puzzled over &amp;quot;Self-Portrait&amp;quot; (how could a self portrait be of Van Gogh, but not painted by him?) the videodisc answer was displayed on the adjacent screen: first, a portrait of Van Gogh that had been painted by his friend Gauguin, and - surprisingly - a self portrait of Van Gogh that was not painted, but drawn.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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