waashk/dblp huggingface dataset:
focus and higher-order unification. pulman has shown that higher-order unification (hou) can be used to model the interpretation of focus. in this paper, we extend the unification-based approach to cases which are often seen as a test-bed for focus theory: utterances with multiple focus operators and second occurrence expressions. we then show that the resulting analysis favourably compares with two prominent theories of focus (namely, rooth's alternative semantics and krifka's structured meanings theory) in that it correctly generates interpretations which these alternative theories cannot yield. finally, we discuss the formal properties of the approach and argue that even though hou need not terminate, for the class of unification-problems dealt with in this paper, hou avoids this shortcoming and is in fact computationally tractable.
generating from a deep structure. noncanonical semantic representations are representations which cannot be derived by some grammar g although they are semantically equivalent to representations which can be derived by g. this paper presents a generation algorithm which deals with noncanonical input. the proposed approach also enhances portability and language independence in that (i) linguistic decisions made by independent modules (e.g., planner, transfer component) can be communicated to the generator in a natural way and (ii) the same algorithm coupled with different grammars will yield sentences in the corresponding languages.
manipulating human-oriented dictionaries with very simple tools. it is possible to manipulate real-size human-oriented dictionaries on a macintosh by using only very simple tools. our methodology has been applied in the construction of a french-english-malay dictionary. this dictionary has been obtained by "crossing" semi-automatically two bilingual dictionaries. to revise the dictionary, as well as to obtain a publishable paper form and an on-line electronic form, we use only microsoft word&trade;, a specialized language for writing transcriptors and a small but powerful dictionary tool.
modularity in a connectionist model of morphology acquisition. this paper describes a modular connectionist model of the acquisition of receptive inflectional morphology. the model takes inputs in the form of phones one at a time and outputs the associated roots and inflections. in its simplest version, the network consists of separate simple recurrent subnetworks for root and inflection identification; both networks take the phone sequence as inputs. it is shown that the performance of the two separate modular networks is superior to a single network responsible for both root and inflection identification. in a more elaborate version of the model, the network learns to use separate hidden-layer modules to solve the separate tasks of root and inflection identification.
sequencing in a connectionist model of language processing. recent research suggests that human language processing can be profitably viewed in terms of the spread of activation through a network of simple processing units. decision making in connectionist modcls such as these is distributed and consists in selections made from sets of mutually inhibiting candidate items which are activated on the basis of input features. in these models, however, there is the problem, especially for generation, of obtaining sequential behavior from an essentially parallel process. the thrust of this paper is that sequencing can also be modelled as a process of competition between candidates activated on the basis of input features. in the case of sequencing, the competition concerns which of a set of pharse constituents will appear in a particular output position. this account allows output ordering to arise out of the interaction of syntactic with semantic and pragmatic factors, as seems to be the case for human language generation. the paper describes a localized connectionist model of language generation, focusing on the representation and use of sequencing information. we also show how these same sequencing representations and mechanisms are usable in parsing as well.
une ontologie du temps pour le langage naturel. we propose a new ontology for the time in natural language which provides the following features:- it renders an account of most of the temporal phenomena of language (dates, duration, events, states) ; it offers capacities for the comprehension of the narratives ;- in the contrary to the traditional systems, it needs no hard "types" for dealing with the different classes used by the terminology: thus an event may date others "when john died, there were many demonstrations in the world", a date may be the beginning of an event "monday, paul was leaving for a six months tour" ; our ontology endures the fluidity of natural language which does not make rigid, in the narratives, the signification of the temporal entities ;- it allows some multiplicity of points of view (partially inconsistent) about a single event: in the sentence "the travel of christophe colomb, which endured a long time, has been the beginning of a rich period of exploration", "the voyage of cc" is seen as a simple event in the main proposition and as a complex event in the subordinate one.with respect to these issues, the ontology uses the following frameworks:- a klone-like network aiming at a quick detection of incoherences: it contains taxonomic inferences (including the whole terminology) plus the facts ; a bulk of rules (assertional device) embodying contingent properties ;- non-monotonic reasoning is needed to revise simplistic conclusions obtained from superficial descriptions: the rules and the links of the network may be default rules ;- the vade (variable depth) system supports our ontology ; it is implemented with an atms-like truth maintenance system.the flexible ontology we present offers an interesting frame for further researches in computational linguistics, in particular in the domain of the interpretation of the narratives.
la resoution d'anaphore a partir d'un lexique-grammaire des verbes anaphoriques. this paper presents a system which intends to resolve anaphora in the framework of the discourse representation theory, and using a lexicon-grammar of anaphoric verbs, through the application of selection criteria for assignment of a referent to an anaphora.from a semantic representation of text provided by a drt system implemented in prolog, the system uses several criteria of selection of referent. one of these criteria is the anaphoric conditions of verbs described as a lexicon-grammar of anaphoric verbs.the present paper investigates a transformational analysis of verbs related to their anaphoric behaviour, and the adequacy of extension of the lexicon-grammar of m. gross to anaphoric conditions on verbs.
direct and underspecified interpretations of lfg f-structures. we describe an approach to interpreting lfg f-structures (kaplan & bresnan, 1982) truth-conditionally as underspecified quasi-logical forms. f-structures are either interpreted indirectly in terms of a homomorphic embedding into quasi logical form (qlf) (alshawi, 1992; alshawi & crouch, 1992; cooper et al., 1994a) representations or directly in terms of adapting qlf interpretation clauses to f-structure representations. we provide a reverse mapping from qlfs to f-structures and establish isomorphic subsets of the qlf and lfg formalism. a simple mapping which switches off qlf contextual resolution can be shown to be truth preserving with respect to an independently given semantics (dalrymple et al., 1995). we compare our proposal with approaches discussed in the literature.
contribution of a category hierarchy to the robustness of syntactic parsing. we describe how the use of a hierarchy of lexical categories instead of a simple set of categories leads to the definition of a flexible and precise language for the description of dependency structures. after specifying the formalism we use to decorate these structures, we present an application aiming to detect and correct errors in a written text. we outline how the use of the hierarchy improves the manipulation of unknown words.
towards a more user-friendly correction. we first present our view of detection and correction of syntactic errors. we then introduce a new correction method, based on heuristic criteria used to decide which correction should be preferred. weighting of these criteria leads to a flexible and parametrable system, which can adapt itself to the user. a partitioning of the trees based on linguistic criteria: agreement rules, rather than computational criteria is then necessary. we end by proposing extensions to lexical correction and to some syntactic errors. our aim is an adaptable and user-friendly system capable of automatic correction for some applications.
distributing and porting general linguistic tools. our main motivation is to build general and adaptable linguistic tools and we have faced the problem of their portability. we first make a quick description of the linguistic tools we have at hand and we explain why linguistic tools, unlike other software tools, present particular portability problems. we then discuss code portability and also data portability and we describe the method we have used for a french lexicon, showing that portability leads to a more "natural" computational lexicon. we then propose the use of a command language to interface the tools with more complex applications and we show that this technique facilitates integration of tools from various sources, entails a better exploitation of linguistic resources and makes easier the distribution of tools on several machines.
parsing as tree traversal. this paper presents a unified approach to parsing, in which top-down, bottom-up and left-corner parsers are related to preorder, postorder and inorder tree traversals. it is shown that the simplest bottom-up and left-corner parsers are left recursive and must be converted using an extended greibach normal form. with further partial execution, the bottom-up and left-corner parsers collapse together as in the bup parser of matsumoto.
the correct and efficient implementation of appropriateness specifications for typed feature structures. in this paper, we argue that type inferencing incorrectly implements appropriateness specifications for typed feature structures, promote a combination of type resolution and unfilling as a correct and efficient alternative, and consider the expressive limits of this alternative approach. throughout, we use feature cooccurence restrictions as illustration and linguistic motivation.
semantic interpretation of pragmatic clues: connectives, modal verbs, and indirect speech acts. much work in current research in the field of semantic pragmatic analysis has been concerned with the interpretation of natural language utterances in the context of dialogs, in this paper, however, we will present methods for a primary pragmatic analysis of single utterances. our investigations involve problems which are not currently well understood, for example how to infer the speaker's intentions by using interpretation of connectives and modal verbs.
robust parsing of severely corrupted spoken utterances. this paper describes a technique for enabling a speech understanding system to deal with sentences for which some monosyllabic words are not recognized. such words are supposed to act as mere syntactic markers within the system linguistic domain. this result is achieved by combining a modified caseframe approach to linguistic knowledge representation with a parsing strategy able to integrate expectations from the language model and predictions from words. experimental results show that the proposed technique permits to greatly increase the quota of corrupted sentences correctly understandable without sensibly decreasing parsing efficiency.
the psi/phi architecture for prosodic parsing. in this paper an architecture and an implementation for a linguistically based prosodic analyser is presented. the implementation is designed to handle typical prosodic input in the form of parallel input channels, and processes each input channel independently in a data-directed, phonologically motivated configuration of partly parallel, partly cascaded feature modules and module clusters, each implemented as finite transducers, producing intonationally relevant categories as output. the design criteria included maximal restriction of computational power (the system could be compiled into one massive finite transducer); relevance to computational linguistic formalisms with a view to developing an integrated model mapping prosodic structures on to textual structures; relatability to speech recognition algorithms, and to phonological theories. it was implemented in an object oriented environment with parallel processing simulation (cheops), and a linguistically interesting surface language (batlan).
probabilistic models of verb-argument structure. we evaluate probabilistic models of verb argument structure trained on a corpus of verbs and their syntactic arguments. models designed to represent patterns of verb alternation behavior are compared with generic clustering models in terms of the perplexity assigned to held-out test data. while the specialized models of alternation do not perform as well, closer examination reveals alternation behavior represented implicitly in the generic models.
a computational approach to binding theory. this paper is a first step towards a computational account of binding theory (bt). two algorithms that compute, respectively, principle a and b have been provided. particular attention has been devoted to possible interactions of bt with other modules of the linguistic theory, such as those ruling argumental chains. finally, the computational complexity of the algorithms has been studied.
tbms: domain specific text management and lexicon development. the definition of a text base management system is introduced in terms of software engineering. that gives a basis for discussing practical text administration, including questions on corpus properties and appropriate retrieval criteria. finally, strategies for the derivation of a word data base from an actual tbms will be discussed.
an active bilingual lexicon for machine translation. an approach to the transfer phase of a machine translation system is presented, where the bilingual lexicon plays an active role, guiding transfer by means of executable descriptions of word senses. the means for lexical sense specification are, however, general enough and can in principle apply to other system architectures, e.g. in the generation phase if transfer is intentionally kept minimal. the active lexicon is the one and only system component which is exposed to users and can serve to linguistically control transfer effects. a unified approach to lexicon creation and maintenance is proposed, which contains means to gradually refine sense specification and tailor the definitions to specific text domains. the underlying linguistic principles, the nature of sense distinction required for translation, and the formal structure of the lexicon are discussed.
anytime algorithms for speech parsing? this paper discusses to which extent the concept of "anytime algorithms" can be applied to parsing algorithms with feature unification. we first try to give a more precise definition of what an anytime algorithm is. we arque that parsing algorithms have to be classified as contract algorithms as opposed to (truly) interruptible algorithms. with the restriction that the transaction being active at the time an interrupt is issued has to be completed before the interrupt can be executed, it is possible to provide a parser with limited anytime behavior, which is in fact being realized in our research prototype.
research on architectures for integrated speech/language systems in verbmobil. the german joint research project verbmobil (vm) aims at the development of a speech to speech translation system. this paper reports on research done in our group which belongs to verbmobil's subproject on system architectures (tp15). our specific research areas are the construction of parsers for spontaneous speech, investigations in the parallelization of parsing and to contribute to the development of a flexible communication architecture with distributed control.
a finite state approach to german verb morphology. this paper presents a new, language independent model for analysis and generation of word froms based on finite state transducers (fsts). it has been completely implemented on a pc and successfully tested with lexicons and rules covering all of german verb morphology and the most interesting subsets of french and spanish verbs as well. the linguistic databascs consist of a letter-tree structured lexicon with annotated feature lists and a fst which is constructed from a set of morphophonological rules. these rewriting rules operate on complete words unlike other fst-based systems.
controlling lexical substitution in computer text generation. this report describes paul, a computer text generation system designed to create cohesive text through the use of lexical substitutions. specifically, this system is designed to deterministically choose between pronominalization, superordinate substitution, and definite noun phrase reiteration. the system identifies a strength of antecedence recovery for each of the lexical substitutions, and matches them against the strength of potential antecedence of each element in the text to select the proper substitutions for these elements.
modularizing contexted constraints. this paper describes a method for compiling a constraint-based grammar into a potentially more efficient form for processing. this method takes dependent disjunctions within a constraint formula and factors them into non-interacting groups whenever possible by determining their independence. when a group of dependent disjunctions is split into smaller groups, an exponential amount of redundant information is reduced. at runtime, this means that an exponential amount of processing can be saved as well. since the performance of an algorithm for processing constraints with dependent disjunctions is highly determined by its input, the transformation presented in this paper should prove beneficial for all such algorithms.
denormalization and cross referencing in theoretical lexicography. a computational vehicle for lexicography was designed to keep to the constraints of meaning-text theory: sets of lexical correlates, limits on the form of definitions, and argument relations similar to lexical-functional grammar.relational data bases look like a natural framework for this. but linguists operate with a non-normalized view. mappings between semantic actants and grammatical relations do not fit actant fields uniquely. lexical correlates and examples are polyvalent, hence denormalized.cross referencing routines help the lexicographer work toward a closure state in which every term of a definition traces back to zero level terms defined extralinguistically or circularly. dummy entries produced from defining terms ensure no trace is overlooked. values of lexical correlates lead to other word senses. cross references for glosses produce an indexed unilingual dictionary, the start of a fully bilingual one.to assist field work a small structured editor for a systematically denormalized data base was implemented in ptp under rt-11; mumps would now be easier to implement on small machines. it allowed fields to be repeated and nonatomic strings included, and produced cross reference entries. it served for a monograph on a language of mexico and for student projects from africa and asia.1
natural language interfaces using limited semantic information. in order to analyze their input properly, natural language interfaces require access to domain-specific semantic information. however, design considerations for practical systems -- in particular, the desire to construct interfaces which are readily portable to new domains -- require us to limit and segregate this domain-specific information. we consider here the possibility of limiting ourselves to a characterization of the <u>structure of information</u> in a domain. this structure is captured in a <u>domain information schema</u>, which specifies the semantic classes of the domain, the words and phrases which belong to these classes, and the predicate-argument relationships among members of these classes which are meaningful in the domain. we describe how this schema is used by the various stages of two large natural language processing systems.
comlex syntax: building a computational lexicon. we describe the design of comlex syntax, a computational lexicon providing detailed syntactic information for approximately 38,000 english headwords. we consider the types of errors which arise in creating such a lexicon, and how such errors can be measured and controlled.
automated determination of sublanguage syntactic usage. sublanguages differ from each other, and from the "standard language", in their syntactic, semantic, and discourse properties. understanding these differnces is important if we are to improve our ability to process these sublanguages. we have developed a semiautomatic procedure for identifying sublanguage syntactic usage from a sample of text in the sublanguage. we describe the results of applying this procedure to three text samples: two sets of medical documents and a set of equipment failure messages.
information extraction and semantic constraints. we consider the problem of extracting specified types of information from natural language text. to properly analyze the text, we wish to apply semantic (selectional) constraints whenever possible; however, we cannot expect to have semantic patterns for all the input we may encounter in real texts. we therefore use preference semantics: selecting the analysis which maximizes the number of semantic patterns matched. we describe a specific information extraction task, and report on the benefits of using preference semantics for this task.
generalizing automatically generated selectional patterns. frequency information on co-occurrence patterns can be automatically collected from a syntactically analyzed corpus; this information can then serve as the basis for selectional constraints when analyzing new text from the same domain. this information, however, is necessarily incomplete. we report on measurements of the degree of selectional coverage obtained with different sizes of corpora. we then describe a technique for using the corpus to identify selectionally similar terms, and for using this similarity to broaden the selectional coverage for a fixed corpus size.
message understanding conference- 6: a brief history. we have recently completed the sixth in a series of "message understanding conferences" which are designed to promote and evaluate research in information extraction. muc-6 introduced several innovations over prior mucs, most notably in the range of different tasks for which evaluations were conducted. we describe some of the motivations for the new format and briefly discuss some of the results of the evaluations.
segmentation and labelling of slovenian diphone inventories. preparation, recording, segmentation and pitch labelling of slovenian diphone inventories are described. a special user friendly interface package was developed in order to facilitate these operations. as acquisition of a labelled diphone inventory or adaptation of a speech synthesis system to synthesise further voices is manually intensive, an automatic procedure is required. a speech recogniser, based on hidden markov models in forced segmentation mode is used to outline phone boundaries within spoken logatoms. a statistical evaluation of manual and automatic segmentation discrepancies is performed so as to estimate the reliability of automatically derived labels. finally, diphone boundaries are determined and pitch markers are assigned to voiced sections of the speech signal.