A natural language user interface for fuzzy scope queries

This paper presents a two-agent framework to build a natural language query interface for IC information system, focusing more on scope queries in a single English sentence. The first agent, parsing agent, syntactically processes and semantically interprets natural language sentence to construct a fuzzy structured query language (SQL) statement. The second agent, defuzzifying agent, defuzzifies the imprecise part of the fuzzy SQL statement into its equivalent executable precise SQL statement based on fuzzy rules. The first agent can also actively ask the user some necessary questions when it manages to disambiguate the vague retrieval requirements. The adaptive defuzzification approach employed in the defuzzifying agent is discussed in detail. A prototype interface has been implemented to demonstrate the effectiveness.