Generating Narratives from Plots Using Schema Information

Abstract

The temporal dimension adds to databases the capability of functioning as repositories of narratives about the objects involved. Database narratives correspond both to sequences of past events and to simulated future events. This work addresses the problem of displaying such narratives in natural language. We focus here on the first kind of narrative, that is, we analyze a segment extracted from a log of the execution of pre-defined application- oriented operations, which is treated as a plot of the narrative in question. The main point in the presentation is that a three-level conceptual schema of the database provides a sound basis for interpreting such plots, although it should be complemented with further linguistic processing for the sake of fluency and conciseness. The schema-driven method for generating narratives from plots is described. A prototype Prolog implementation of the method is operational. A simple example is used to illustrate the discussion.

The work of the second author was supported by FAPERJ - Fundaçäo de Amparo á Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro - Brazil