[Freddy]

Has anyone worked with paraphrasing at all?

I'm looking for an API, I've found old references to a Microsoft Paraphrase API, but can't track it down, maybe they dropped it.

An API would be a quick fix, but it might make a nice Summer project in PHP.

[Zero]

There's a corpus, here
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52398
That's not an API, not sure whether it helps.

Is it for Elfscript?

[Freddy]

It might help down the line thanks.

Is it for Elfscript?

Yes but as part of the engine running Jess. The language/script is pretty much there now, but the engine can always be expanded with further functions called by script.

I was looking for a way to rephrase sentences too, that's how I ended up looking for something to paraphrase.

I'm thinking about a way to give more variety in responses. So for example, if the bot asks:

Hello user what are you doing?

I'd be aiming to programmatically rephrase that to something like:

Hey, what are you up to?

I have a dictionary so I could try using synonyms to start with.

[Don Patrick]

Some methods: http://veredshwartz.blogspot.com/2017/08/paraphrasing.html
A paraphrase database: http://paraphrase.org/#/search?q=how%20do%20you%20do&filter=&lang=en

I've only done synonyms myself, it works reasonably on verbs but replacing nouns can get weird.

[Freddy]

Thanks Don, I remembered your summariser project of course, so thought you must have come by this

I've only done synonyms myself, it works reasonably on verbs but replacing nouns can get weird.

Yes I have tried that in the past and agree