Natural language interface to video database

In this paper, we discuss a natural language interface to a database of structured textual descriptions in the form of annotations of video objects. The interface maps the natural language query input on to the annotation structures. The language processing is done in three phases of expectations and implications from the input word, disambiguation of noun implications and slot-filling of prepositional expectations, and finally, disambiguation of verbal expectations. The system has been tested with different types of user inputs, including ill-formed sentences, and studied for erroneous inputs and for different types of portability issues.