New language connects to stored knowledge

The Teachable Language Comprehender related new text to a semantic network and represented what it learned in the same form.

M. Ross Quillian

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The contribution

TLC was designed to connect the assertions in new text with facts already held in a semantic memory. It adapted relevant structures to represent the new material, so that the result could itself become part of memory. Teaching the system facts and interpretation procedures was intended to expand its ability to comprehend later sentences.

What this does not establish

The published system contained a limited collection of facts and interpretation capabilities. Its general design should not be mistaken for a demonstrated ability to learn or understand arbitrary English.

Why this date?

The journal article appeared in August 1969. The publisher metadata gives pages 459-476; the SHRDLU bibliography shortens that range to 459-475.

This entry follows the linked publication. Read the source and date conventions.

The original work

The teachable language comprehender: a simulation program and theory of language

Authors: M. Ross Quillian
Publication: Communications of the ACM, 12 (8), 459-476
Source type: Journal article

Original journal record

The links above support the description and dating of this entry. Full text may be open or publisher-restricted.

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 45, printed page 461. Check the reference list.

Citations

Works in the Atlas cited by this entry.

Semantic Memory (1966)
Publisher-deposited reference 11 cites the 1968 Semantic Information Processing chapter. The Atlas entry dates the original 1966 thesis. Check the reference list.

Bibliography coverage: Reference section indexed. Open the source.

The complete bibliography of the original 1969 article is indexed from its full article transcription and checked against the 22 publisher-deposited references. The transcription retains scan and column-order errors: the Raphael et al. title appears earlier than its author line. The Quillian Semantic Memory reference is the 1968 chapter version. The Weizenbaum reference is a distinct 1967 article, not the 1966 ELIZA paper.

Read the indexed bibliography

Bibliography, printed pages 475-476

BIBLIOGRAPHY ABELSON, R. P., A.ND CAI~ROLL, J. D. Computer simulation of individual belief systems. Amer. Behav. Sci. 8, 9 (1965), 24-30. BOBROW, D. G., MURPhy, D. L., AND TEITELMAN,W. The BBN LISP system. Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge, Mass., 1968. Crm~sKv, N. Aspecls of the Theory of SynSax. M I T Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965. COLLINS, A. M., AND QUILLIAN,M. R. Retrieval time from semantic memory. Rep. No. 1692. Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge, Mass., 1968. To appear in J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. (1969). Communications of the ACM 475 Brief Survey of Computer Languages for Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation. North-Holland Pub. Co., Amsterdam, 1968. REITMAN, W. 1~. Cognition and Thought: An Information Processing Approach. Wiley, New York, 1965. FEIGENBAUM, E. A., AND •ELDMAN, J. Computers and Thought. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963. :KuNo, S. The predictive analyzer and a path elimination technique. Comm. ACM 8, 7 (July, 1965), 453-462. LONGYEAR, C. The semantic rule. Rep. No. 67TMP-55, General Electric TEMPO Project, Santa Barbara, Calif., 1967. MINSKY, M. Semantic Information Processing. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968. NEWELL, A., SHAW, J. C., AND SIMON, H . A . The processes of creative thinking. In Contemporary Approaches to Creative Thinking, H. E. Gruber, G. Terrell, and M. Wertheimer (Eds.), Atherton Press, New York, 1962, pp. 63-119. PIAGET, J. ]'he Psyehology of [ntelligence. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1950. QUILLIAN, M. R. Semantic Memory. In Semantic Information Processing, M. Minsky, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968. Word concepts: a theory and simulation of some basic semantic capabilities. Behav. Sci. 12 (1967), 410-430. - - - - , WORTM~N, P. AND BAYLOR,G.W. The programable Piaget: Behavior from the standpoint of a radical computerist. Unpublished dittoed paper, Carnegie-Melon U., Pittsburgh, Pa., 1965. I~.APHAEL, B., BOBROW, D. G., FEIN, L., AND YOUNG, Z.W. A SIKLOSSY, L., AND SIMON, It. A. Some semantic methods for language processing. Complex information processing Paper 129, Carnegie-Mellon U., Pittsburgh, Penn., 1968. SIMMONS, R. F. Answering English questions by computer: a survey. Comm. ACM 8, 1 (Jan. 1965), 53-70. - - AND BURGER, Z. F. A semantic analyzer for English sentences. Rep. No. SP 2987, Syst. Develop. Corp., Santa Monica, Calif., 1968. TESL~R, L., ENEA, H., AND COLBY, K. M. A directed graph representation for computer simulation of belief systems. Dep. Comput. Sci., Stanford U., Stanford, Calif., 1967. THOMPSON, F. B. The deacon project. Rep. No. 65TMP-69, General Electric TEMPO Project, Santa Barbara, Calif., 1965. THORNE, J. P., BRATLEY, P., AND DEWAR, H. The syntactic analysis of English by machine. In Machine Intelligence 3, Donald Michie (Ed.), American Elsevier, New York, 1968, pp. 281-309. WEIZENBAUM,J. Contextual understanding by computer. Comm. ACM 10, 8 (Aug. 1967), 474-480.

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These links cover verified matches within the Atlas. They are not total scholarly citation counts. A citation alone does not establish that the later system implements the same method.

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The contribution

What this does not establish

Why this date?

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