What This Tutorial is About
      • The design and construction of systems which
         – produce understandable texts in English or 
           other human languages 
         – from some underlying non-linguistic 
           representation of information. 
      • These systems 
         – combine knowledge about language and the 
           application domain 
         – to automatically produce documents, 
           reports, explanations, help messages, ...
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             Goals of the Tutorial
      • For managers
         – to provide a broad overview of the field and 
           what is possible today
      • For implementers
         – to provide a realistic assessment of 
           available techniques
      • For researchers
         – to highlight the issues that are important in 
           current applied NLG projects
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                     Overview
     1     An Introduction to NLG
     2     Requirements Analysis for NLG
     3     NLG Architecture and System Design
     4     A Case Study 
     5     A Closer Look at the Component Tasks
     6     Conclusions and Pointers
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         An Introduction to NLG
     • What is Natural Language Generation?
     • Some Example Systems
     • Types of NLG Applications
     • When is NLG an Appropriate Technology?
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                   What is NLG?
      Natural language generation is the process of 
      deliberately constructing a natural language text 
      in order to meet specified communicative goals.
                                       [McDonald 1992]
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