A new level of language generation technology: capabilities and possibilities

A description is given of how Penman, one of the largest language generators in the world, has been restructured to make it one of the easiest to use, requiring semantic (i.e. domain-based) input instead of syntactic forms. How the presence of powerful sentence-generator technology allows the development of a number of new projects is outlined. It is noted that the eight possible directions of growth of language generation technology can result in greatly enhanced human-computer interface systems. Of these, it is concluded that two offer the most promise in the near future: the ability to plan multiparagraph texts will make possible the automatic generation of reports as well as the generation of paragraphs describing the salient features of large collections of numerical information, and the ability to generate text variations will allow enhanced use of computer output to a wider portion of society in a form they can appreciate