Text Understanding in LILOG

The IBM project LILOG presented in this volume represents afundamental stepbeyond computer science as hithertounderstood. It was a successful project in every respect andhas shed light on conjectured basic interrelations betweenknowledge processing and language definition. Knowledgeprocessing is strongly coupled to the natural language used,and for applied knowledge processing an information base isneededwhich defines the semantic contents andinterrelations of the language.The LILOG project was an implementation of an informationbasein the German language. A set of tools was alsodeveloped to work with the system, including structuredman-machine interfaces using natural language, inferencealgorithms, and a complete subsystem to acquire and storethe required knowledge.The LILOG project started in 1985 and a functional systemwas demonstrated in 1991. The project involved approximately200 of the scientists working in Germany in the fields ofcomputational linguistics, natural language understandingsystems, and artificial intelligence. The project provesthat a cooperative project between universities and industrycan produce useful results both in pure research and inimplemented methods and tools.