Just thought I'd inform you of how the project is going.
42nd day of work: Arckon understands what I mean, up to a certain extent. he is not aware of such a thing as time, for instance, and regards everything as if it is happening now. he can check facts in his memory, and the results are stored in 'thoughts', which I mostly use for display to keep an eye on what he is processing. These thoughts are then used to form an answer with, again in proper english. So arckon can answer to both statements and (straight) questions in the same way. He cannot however, answer open questions, starting with "what", "who", "why", etc.
When confronted with an unknown word, Arckon will try to determine what type of word it is (person, thing, etc.), by analysing grammar of the input sentence once again. If he can determine its type, he adds the word to his memory. if not, he'll ask what it means (using a standard reply). He can also draw conclusions from input statements, and change his knowlegde in memory accordingly.
It's not all perfected yet, but I'd say I'm done with the language interface for now. and his learning skills are acceptable enough for me to start with the more important skills:
Actual reasoning. For this, I will first have to give him some tools he can use to reason with; the subroutines for answering open questions.