ABSTRACT
The interest in language-processing centers around the need to build good interfaces between people and machines. Since language use does not have to be taught early workers sought to exploit it in building better interfaces. Computer implementation of these interfaces has turned out to be quite difficult. But what has turned out is that work in language processing has given insight into some of the communicative functions that exist in any kind of interaction, which are really independent of the language modality. So, some of the work that has come out of the language-processing area will be discussed, especially that involving the building of cooperative interfaces, see, for example, Joshi (1982), Joshi, Weischedel, and Webber (1984), and Finin, Joshi, and Webber (1986).
