A foundation for flexible automated electronic communication

In this paper the author describes a formal language for communication base d on linguistics-more specifically, a theory of natural language communicat ion and models of natural language conversations. The language has a small number of general message types that are formally defined by their intended effects on the recipient. For each message type he defines a standard auto mated method of responding that depends only on the message type and is ind ependent of the message's content. For more complex conversations he provid es methods for responding that do depend on the content. In this system, a message's sender-automated or human-constructs and sends a message knowing that he cannot know, but can only predict, how it will be interpreted. The agent receiving the message interprets it and then uses it as a basis for i nferring how he should respond. The message interpretation mechanism for th is language is reusable, modular, and shared by all applications. The benef it of this communication system is that it makes the communication infrastr ucture more flexible, easier to modify, easier to expand, and more capable.