Referring expressions as formulas of description logic

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to reinterpret the problem of generating referring expressions (GRE) as the problem of computing a formula in a description logic that is only satisfied by the referent. This view offers a new unifying perspective under which existing GRE algorithms can be compared. We also show that by applying existing algorithms for computing simulation classes in description logic, we can obtain extremely efficient algorithms for relational referring expressions without any danger of running into infinite regress.