The Problem of Understanding

Abstract

Reading the Chung Tzu quote presented above one might initially get the impression that it would suffice to specify the meaning of words in some way then string those meanings together and the problem of language understanding would be solved once and for all. However, as in his paradoxical remark there is a catch which has confounded researchers for some time and thwarted numerous attempts in artificial intelligence research to build systems that interact with humans via natural language. This catch - as will be claimed in this book - has its origin in the inherent context-dependency of natural language use or the use for any other human communicative signals such as gestures or facial expressions for that matter.