Everyday language computing toward language-based computational environment

The a Everyday language computing (ELC) is a new computational paradigm that all people, from small children to aged persons, can access and use computing systems with his/her own everyday language. As a way to realize ELC, we proposed a framework of language-based operating system (LOS), and we are now working intensively to develop the fundamental part of it. In this paper, we report our status of research on LOS. One of the main components of LOS is the semiotic base, which is a database of linguistic knowledge based on Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory. We explain the architecture of the semiotic base and corpus experiments conducted to determine the contents of it. A client's secretary agent is a user interface of LOS which realizes everyday language communication between a user and the system. We explain a client model that realizes personalized communication and the plan module that manages the structure of dialogue. In LOS, all kinds of information processing are done through everyday language. Language protocol is a computer protocol based on everyday language, and language-based application is a kind of agent software that provides services through language. We explain the characteristics of language protocol, the structure of language-based application programming interface (LAPI), and text interpretation process of language-based applications. Finally, we discuss prospects of this project and mention future work that remains to be done. We argue that by processing meaning of language rather than processing numbers, we attempt to provide a more human-like computer system and an intelligent computational environment to all people.