Expanding the Horizons of Natural Language Interfaces 
 
 Current natural language interfaces have concentrated largely on determining the literal meaning of input from their users . While such decoding is an essential underpinning, much recent work suggests that natural language interfaces will never appear cooperative or graceful unless they also incorporate numerous non-literal aspects of communication , such as robust communication procedures . This paper defends that view, but claims that direct imitation of human performance is not the best way to implement many of these non-literal aspects of communication ; that the new technology of powerful personal computers with integral graphics displays offers techniques superior to those of humans for these aspects, while still satisfying human communication needs . The paper proposes interfaces based on a judicious mixture of these techniques and the still valuable methods of more traditional natural language interfaces.  