Abstract: | General methods for understanding a natural language based on the intensive use of rewrite rules and on the existence of several cooperating processes are put forward. The choice of Horn-clause logic as the underlying formalism for semantic representations, together with the employment of unification as pattern-matching procedure and depth-first search with backtracking were derived from logic-programming ideas, in particular from the use of PROLOG. Several examples are presented to illustrate how these methods work. |