Abduction in games for a flexible approach to discourse planning

Abstract

We propose a new approach to document planning for natural language generation that considers this process as strategic interaction between the generation component and a user model. The core task of the user model is abductive reasoning about the usefulness of rhetorical relations for the document plan with respect to the user's information requirements. Since the different preferences of the generation component and the user model are defined by parametrised utility functions, we achieve a highly flexible approach to the generation of document plans for different users. We apply this approach to the generation of reports on performance data. The questionnaire-based evaluation we accomplished so far corroborates the assumptions made in the model. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.