Remembering a story through relations

A system stored the relations in an English story so that it could answer questions about the story later.

Alan L. Tharp and Gilbert K. Krulee

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The contribution

Tharp and Krulee converted sentences into predicates and property lists, organized relations across the passage, and used the resulting representation to answer inquiries. Their design explicitly addressed storage, retrieval, temporal organization, and priorities among remembered information. It is an early concrete treatment of memory as part of an interactive reasoning system.

What this does not establish

The work illustrates a constrained language and retrieval system, not unrestricted autobiographical memory. Its use of long-term memory describes the model rather than a demonstrated equivalence to human memory.

Why this date?

The original paper appears in the 1969 IJCAI proceedings. SHRDLU lists it as reference 54, with pages 579-586.

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The original work

Using Relational Operators to Structure Long-Term Memory

Authors: Alan L. Tharp and Gilbert K. Krulee
Publication: IJCAI 1969, 579-586
Source type: Conference paper

Original conference paper (PDF)

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Cited By

Atlas entries whose reference lists cite this work or the publication version noted below.

Procedures as a Representation for Data in a Computer Program for Understanding Natural Language (1971)
Reference 54, printed page 462. Check the reference list.

Citations

Works in the Atlas cited by this entry.

The Use of Theorem-Proving Techniques in Question-Answering Systems (1968)
Listed in the source bibliography. Check the reference list.

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Bibliography (PDF pages 7, 8)

1. Green, P. F., A. K.Wolf, C. Chomsky, and K. L a u g h e r t y . "BASEBALL: An Automatic Quest i o n Answerer." Proceedings of the AFIPS Conference. Fall 1961. pp. 133-144. 2. L i n d s a y , Robert K. " I n f e r e n t i a l Memory as the Basis of Machines which Understand N a t u r a l Language;" in E. A. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman (eds.) Computers and Thought. New Y o r k : M c G r a w - H i l l . 3. Raphael, Bertram. "A Computer Program which ' U n d e r s t a n d s ' . " Proceedings of the AFIPS Conference. F a l l 1964. pp. 577-589. 4. Craig, J. A., S. C. Berezner, H. C. Carney, and C. R. L o n g y e a r . "DEACON: D i r e c t E n g l i s h Access and C o n t r o l . " Proceedings of the AFIPS Conference. F a l l 1966. pp. 365-380. 5. V a l l e e , J . F . , K r u l e e , G.K., and Grau, A.A. "Retrieval Formulae for Inquiry S/sterns." I n f o r m a t i o n Storage and R e t r i e v a l . February, 1968, pp. 13-26. 6. Walker, D. E., "SAFARI: An On-Line TextProcessing System," Proceedings of the American Documentation I n s t i t u t e , 1967. 4. pp. 144-147. 7. Woods, W.A. "Semantic I n t e r p r e t a t i o n of Engl i s h Questions on a Structured Data Base." Mathematical L i n g u i s t i c s and Automatic Translation. Harvard Computation Laborat o r y . NSF R e p o r t 1 7 . A u g u s t , 1 9 6 6 . 8. Rosenbaum, P. S. "A Grammar Base Q u e s t i o n answering Procedure." Communications of t h e ACM. O c t o b e r , 1967. p p . 6 3 0 - 6 3 5 . 9. Hillraan, D. J . , "Negotiation of Inquiries in an On-line Retrieval System." Information Storage and R e t r i e v a l . June, 1968, 10. Jacobs, R.A., and P.S. Rosenbaum. E n g l i s h T r a n s f o r m a t i o n a l Grammar. Waltham, Massachusetts: B l a i s d e l l . 1968. 1 1 . C h i l d c r a f t — T h e How and Why L i b r a r y . C h i c a g o : Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. 1968. 12. Petrick, S. R. A Recognition Procedure for Transformational Grammars. Unpublished Ph.D. D i s s e r t a t i o n . M.I.T. June, 1965. 13. P e t r i c k , S.R. A Program for Transformational -585- Syntactic Analysis. A i r Forca Cambridge Research Laboratories Report AFCRL-66-698, 14. Dutch, R.A. (ed.) Roget's Thesarus of English Words and Phrases. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. L t d . 1962. 15. Kats, J . J . , "Recent Issues in Semantic Theory." Foundations of Language. May, 1967, p. 169. 16. Kochen, M., D.M. MacKay, M.E. Maron, M. S c r i ven, and L. Uhr. "Computers and Comprehension'* in Manfred Kochen ( e d . ) ; The Growth of Knowledge. New Y o r k : W i l e y . 1967. pp. 230-243. 17. Harary, F . , Norman, R.Z., and C a r t w r t g h t , D. Structural Models: An Introduction to the Theory of D i r e c t e d Graphs. New Y o r k : W i l e y , 1965. 18. Sledd, J. A Short Introduction to English Grammar. Chicago: S c o t t , Foresman and Company. 1959. 19. Green, C.C. and Raphael, B. "The Use of Theorem-Proving Techniques in QuestionAnswering Systems." Proceedings of 23rd ACM N a t i o n a l Conference. 1968. pp. 169182. 20. Kuhns, J.L. "Answering Questions by Computer: A L o g i c a l S t u d y . " RAND Memorandum RM-5428PR. December, 1967.

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