On multi-subjectivity in linguistic summarization of relational databases

Abstract

In this paper, we focus on one of the most powerful computing methods for natural-language-driven representation of data, i.e. on Yager's concept of a linguistic summary of a relational database (1982). In particular, we introduce an original extension of that concept: new forms of linguistic summaries. The new forms are named "Multi-Subject" linguistic summaries, because they can handle more than one table or more than one set of records/objects collected in a database, e.g. More boys than girls play football well. Thanks to that, the generated linguistic summaries - quasi-natural language sentences - are more interesting and human-oriented. Finally, they new method is applied to a computer system that generates natural language description of numeric data, that makes them possible to be clearly presented to an end-user. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.