Interactive spoken-language processing in a hybrid connectionist system

Our SCREEN (Symbolic Connectionist Robust Enterprise for Natural Language) system analyzes real-world utterances and can be used for relatively large and complex tasks. SCREEN learns a robust flat syntax, semantics, and pragmatics representation. The system also deals with uncommon syntactic and semantic language irregularities. The system is able to produce many utterance hypotheses based on spoken input and can determine which hypotheses are most likely. SCREEN's ability to analyze spoken language, despite encountering mistakes and uncertainties, demonstrates the system's robustness and potential. Because SCREEN is a German spoken-language system, the example of spoken language that we analyze is in German. We provide a literal and, where appropriate, a more easily understood English translation of any German words and sentences that we use.