This thesis describes a formal model of a subtype of humour, and the implementation of that model in a program that generates jokes of that subtype. Although there is a great deal of literature on humour in general, very little formal work has been done on puns, and none has been implemented. All current linguistic theories of humour are over-general and not falsifiable. Our model, which is specific, formal, implemented and evaluated, makes a significant contribution to the field. Punning riddles are our chosen subtype of verbal humour, for several reasons. They are very common, they exhibit certain regular structures and mechanisms, and they have been studied previously by linguists. Our model is based on our extensive analysis of large numbers of punning riddles, taken from children's jokebooks. The implementation of the model, JA PE (Joke Analysis and Production Engine), generates punning riddles, from a humour independent lexicon. Pun generation requires much less world knowle...

In this paper we survey the role of humor in human-to-human interaction with the aim to see whether it is useful for embodied conversational agents to integrate humor capabilities in their internal model of intelligence, emotions and interaction (verbal and nonverbal) capabilities. For that reason we shortly survey the current state of the art of research in embodied conversational agents, affective computing and verbal and nonverbal interaction. We adhere to the `Computers Are Social Actors' paradigm to assume that human conversational partners of embodied conversational agents assign human properties to these agents, including humor appreciation.

It has been proposed that the ability to generate humor would make a natural language (NL) system more human-like. This study integrates an existing punning riddle generator with an existing NL "robot", whose role is providing conversation and assistance to users in a virtual environment on the internet. Four different levels of integration have been implemented, along a continuum of complexity. At the simplest level, puns can easily be generated to respond to arbitrary user input, yet these lack in both relevance and conversational flow. At the other extreme, puns can match user input well, yet at the cost of selectively screening which input to respond to. It is difficult, therefore, for the NL system to produce relevant, naturalsounding humor based on a wide range of user input. Nonetheless, selective use of the pun generator does make the robot sound slightly more human. 1 Introduction Humor is traditionally regarded as a human capability. It has been viewed as something which sepa...

Humour is a valid subject for research in artificial intelligence, as it is one of the more complex of human behaviours. Although philosophers and others have discussed humour for centuries, it is only very recently that computational work has begun in this field, so the state of the art is still rather basic. Much of the research has concentrated on humour expressed verbally, and there has been some emphasis on models based on "incongruity". Actual implementations have involved puns of very limited forms. It is not clear that computerised jokes could enhance user interfaces in the near future, but there is a role for computer modelling in testing symbolic accounts of the structure of humorous texts. A major problem is the need for a humour-processing program to have knowledge of the world, and reasoning abilities.

Humour is a multi-disciplinary field of research. People have been working on humour in many fields of research like psychology, philosophy and linguistics, sociology and literature. Especially in the context of computer science (or Artificial Intelligence) humour research aims at modeling humour in a computationally tractable way. Having computational models of humour allows interface designers to have the computer generate and interpret humour when interacting with users. There are many situations in human-human interaction where humour plays an important role in keeping the conversation going. Making use of the so-called CASA paradigm (Computers Are Social Actors) we may expect that a similar role can be played in human-computer interaction. In this report we survey current humour research with the aim to identify useful theories that can be applied in the human-computer interaction

This report surveys the role of humor in human-to-human interaction and the possible role of humor in human-computer interaction. The aim is to see whether it is useful for embodied conversational agents to integrate humor capabilities in their internal model of intelligence, emotions and interaction (verbal and nonverbal) capabilities. A current state of the art of research in embodied conversational agents, affective computing and verbal and nonverbal interaction is presented. The report adheres to the ‘Computers Are Social Actors ’ paradigm to assume that human conversational partners of embodied conversational agents assign human properties to these agents, including humor.

We discuss the generation of humorous acts by embodied agents. How can a humorous act be constructed from the discourse and when should it be displayed? Rather than introducing algorithms for humorous act production we discuss the issues that are involved. From our observations it becomes clear that current research on affective computing, research on generating and interpreting facial expressions and research on embodied (and intelligent) agents can and should be combined with humor research. Results can help to design new and interesting applications in humancomputer interaction using embodied agents.