A Semantics-based Communication System for Dysphasic Subjects

Abstract

Dysphasic subjects do not have complete linguistic abilities and only produce a weakly structured, topicalized language. They are offered artificial symbolic languages to help them communicate in a way more adapted to their linguistic abilities. After a structural analysis of a corpus of utterances from children with cerebral palsy, we define a semantic lexicon for such a symbolic language. We use it as the basis of a semantic analysis process able to retrieve an interpretation of the utterances. This semantic analyser is currently used in an application designed to convert iconic languages into natural language; it might find other uses in the field of language rehabilitation.