The Construction of a Pun Generator for Language Skill Development

& Since the early 1990s, there have been a number of small-scale computer programs that automatically constructed simple verbal jokes (puns), but none of these were fully developed systems that could be used for a practical application. We describe the building and testing of the STANDUP program – a large-scale, robust, interactive, user-friendly pun-generator (inspired by Binsted’s JAPE program), which is aimed at allowing children, particularly those with communi-cation disabilities, to develop their linguistic skills. The STANDUP system was designed in consul-tation with potential users and suitable experts, was rigorously engineered using public-domain linguistic data, and has a special purpose, child-friendly, graphical user interface. The software was tested successfully with real users (children with complex communication needs). Although the young field of computational humor has been growing slowly since the early 1990s, most of the implementations have been small, exploratory research prototypes, with no practical applications of the ideas. We have developed a fully working joke-generation system (System To Aug-ment Non-speakers ’ Dialogue Using Puns [STANDUP]) which has been evaluated with real users and is freely available for use as an educationa