XPost: comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.prolog   
      
   In comp.lang.prolog S White  wrote:   
   > The previous poster is correct in that most of you seemed to have   
   > overinterpreted my desire to have an engine able to use natural   
   > language. What i was thinking about wasnt hal 9000 but just the   
   > ability to utilize natural language in actual commands rather than for   
   > instance  decision(X, case2) or whatever. the main focus is on the   
   > legal side of things of course considering it's a doctoral project at   
   [...]   
      
   A simple "NL like" interface can be worked up simply  by defining   
   some prolog operators. After all, one of the key ideas behind solving   
   new problems is defining a nice notation to explain it to yourself in --   
   and that's how, when, where and why the op/3 predicate is.   
   [All English parsers please core dump now].   
      
   E.g. you might define appropriate operators such as "is_a", "a", and "the"   
   so you can type _in Prolog_ things like:   
   	assert(elephant is_a animal).   
   	assert(jumbo is_a elephant).   
   or   
   	Who is_a animal.   
   or   
   	Something is_a animal :- Something is_a elephant.   
   or   
   	jumbo is_a TellMe.   
      
   Define some higher-level "query" primitives to taste (generally   
   to taste like something that underlise SQL-type queries, with joins   
   and what-not).   
      
   Check out some intro "knowlege", "AI", or "database" books that   
   list "Prolog" in the keyword list (streering clear of those that may spell   
   it "PROLOG" or "prolog" or even "ProLog").   
      
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