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cmp-lg/9502039
Multilingual Sentence Categorization according to Language
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper, we describe an approach to sentence categorization which has the originality to be based on natural properties of languages with no training set dependency. The implementation is fast, small, robust and textual errors tolerant. Tested for french, english, spanish and german discrimination, the system g...
cmp-lg/9503001
Using a Corpus for Teaching Turkish Morphology
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper reports on the preliminary phase of our ongoing research towards developing an intelligent tutoring environment for Turkish grammar. One of the components of this environment is a corpus search tool which, among other aspects of the language, will be used to present the learner sample sentences along with ...
cmp-lg/9503002
Computational dialectology in Irish Gaelic
cmp-lg cs.CL
Dialect groupings can be discovered objectively and automatically by cluster analysis of phonetic transcriptions such as those found in a linguistic atlas. The first step in the analysis, the computation of linguistic distance between each pair of sites, can be computed as Levenshtein distance between phonetic string...
cmp-lg/9503003
Tagging French -- comparing a statistical and a constraint-based method
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper we compare two competing approaches to part-of-speech tagging, statistical and constraint-based disambiguation, using French as our test language. We imposed a time limit on our experiment: the amount of time spent on the design of our constraint system was about the same as the time we used to train an...
cmp-lg/9503004
Creating a tagset, lexicon and guesser for a French tagger
cmp-lg cs.CL
We earlier described two taggers for French, a statistical one and a constraint-based one. The two taggers have the same tokeniser and morphological analyser. In this paper, we describe aspects of this work concerned with the definition of the tagset, the building of the lexicon, derived from an existing two-level mo...
cmp-lg/9503005
A specification language for Lexical Functional Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper defines a language L for specifying LFG grammars. This enables constraints on LFG's composite ontology (c-structures synchronised with f-structures) to be stated directly; no appeal to the LFG construction algorithm is needed. We use L to specify schemata annotated rules and the LFG uniqueness, completenes...
cmp-lg/9503006
ParseTalk about Sentence- and Text-Level Anaphora
cmp-lg cs.CL
We provide a unified account of sentence-level and text-level anaphora within the framework of a dependency-based grammar model. Criteria for anaphora resolution within sentence boundaries rephrase major concepts from GB's binding theory, while those for text-level anaphora incorporate an adapted version of a Grosz-S...
cmp-lg/9503007
The Semantics of Motion
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper we present a semantic study of motion complexes (ie. of a motion verb followed by a spatial preposition). We focus on the spatial and the temporal intrinsic semantic properties of the motion verbs, on the one hand, and of the spatial prepositions, on the other hand. Then, we address the problem of combi...
cmp-lg/9503008
Ellipsis and Higher-Order Unification
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, t...
cmp-lg/9503009
Distributional Part-of-Speech Tagging
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper presents an algorithm for tagging words whose part-of-speech properties are unknown. Unlike previous work, the algorithm categorizes word tokens in context instead of word types. The algorithm is evaluated on the Brown Corpus.
cmp-lg/9503010
Corpus-based Method for Automatic Identification of Support Verbs for Nominalizations
cmp-lg cs.CL
Nominalization is a highly productive phenomena in most languages. The process of nominalization ejects a verb from its syntactic role into a nominal position. The original verb is often replaced by a semantically emptied support verb (e.g., "make a proposal"). The choice of a support verb for a given nominalization ...
cmp-lg/9503011
Improving Statistical Language Model Performance with Automatically Generated Word Hierarchies
cmp-lg cs.CL
An automatic word classification system has been designed which processes word unigram and bigram frequency statistics extracted from a corpus of natural language utterances. The system implements a binary top-down form of word clustering which employs an average class mutual information metric. Resulting classificat...
cmp-lg/9503012
A Note on Zipf's Law, Natural Languages, and Noncoding DNA regions
cmp-lg cs.CL q-bio
In Phys. Rev. Letters (73:2, 5 Dec. 94), Mantegna et al. conclude on the basis of Zipf rank frequency data that noncoding DNA sequence regions are more like natural languages than coding regions. We argue on the contrary that an empirical fit to Zipf's ``law'' cannot be used as a criterion for similarity to natural l...
cmp-lg/9503013
Incremental Interpretation: Applications, Theory, and Relationship to Dynamic Semantics
cmp-lg cs.CL
Why should computers interpret language incrementally? In recent years psycholinguistic evidence for incremental interpretation has become more and more compelling, suggesting that humans perform semantic interpretation before constituent boundaries, possibly word by word. However, possible computational applications...
cmp-lg/9503014
Non-Constituent Coordination: Theory and Practice
cmp-lg cs.CL
Despite the large amount of theoretical work done on non-constituent coordination during the last two decades, many computational systems still treat coordination using adapted parsing strategies, in a similar fashion to the SYSCONJ system developed for ATNs. This paper reviews the theoretical literature, and shows w...
cmp-lg/9503015
Incremental Interpretation of Categorial Grammar
cmp-lg cs.CL
The paper describes a parser for Categorial Grammar which provides fully word by word incremental interpretation. The parser does not require fragments of sentences to form constituents, and thereby avoids problems of spurious ambiguity. The paper includes a brief discussion of the relationship between basic Categori...
cmp-lg/9503016
Natural Language Interfaces to Databases - An Introduction
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper is an introduction to natural language interfaces to databases (NLIDBs). A brief overview of the history of NLIDBs is first given. Some advantages and disadvantages of NLIDBs are then discussed, comparing NLIDBs to formal query languages, form-based interfaces, and graphical interfaces. An introduction to ...
cmp-lg/9503017
Redundancy in Collaborative Dialogue
cmp-lg cs.CL
In dialogues in which both agents are autonomous, each agent deliberates whether to accept or reject the contributions of the current speaker. A speaker cannot simply assume that a proposal or an assertion will be accepted. However, an examination of a corpus of naturally-occurring problem-solving dialogues shows tha...
cmp-lg/9503018
Discourse and Deliberation: Testing a Collaborative Strategy
cmp-lg cs.CL
A discourse strategy is a strategy for communicating with another agent. Designing effective dialogue systems requires designing agents that can choose among discourse strategies. We claim that the design of effective strategies must take cognitive factors into account, propose a new method for testing the hypothesiz...
cmp-lg/9503019
SATZ - An Adaptive Sentence Segmentation System
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper provides a detailed description of the sentence segmentation system first introduced in cmp-lg/9411022. It provides results of systematic experiments involving sentence boundary determination, including context size, lexicon size, and single-case texts. Also included are the results of successfully adaptin...
cmp-lg/9503020
Different Issues in the Design of a Lemmatizer/Tagger for Basque
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper presents relevant issues that have been considered in the design of a general purpose lemmatizer/tagger for Basque (EUSLEM). The lemmatizer/tagger is conceived as a basic tool necessary for other linguistic applications. It uses the lexical data base and the morphological analyzer previously developed and ...
cmp-lg/9503021
A Note on the Complexity of Restricted Attribute-Value Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
The recognition problem for attribute-value grammars (AVGs) was shown to be undecidable by Johnson in 1988. Therefore, the general form of AVGs is of no practical use. In this paper we study a very restricted form of AVG, for which the recognition problem is decidable (though still NP-complete), the R-AVG. We show th...
cmp-lg/9503022
Assessing Complexity Results in Feature Theories
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper, we assess the complexity results of formalisms that describe the feature theories used in computational linguistics. We show that from these complexity results no immediate conclusions can be drawn about the complexity of the recognition problem of unification grammars using these feature theories. On ...
cmp-lg/9503023
A fast partial parse of natural language sentences using a connectionist method
cmp-lg cs.CL
The pattern matching capabilities of neural networks can be used to locate syntactic constituents of natural language. This paper describes a fully automated hybrid system, using neural nets operating within a grammatic framework. It addresses the representation of language for connectionist processing, and describes...
cmp-lg/9503024
From compositional to systematic semantics
cmp-lg cs.CL
We prove a theorem stating that any semantics can be encoded as a compositional semantics, which means that, essentially, the standard definition of compositionality is formally vacuous. We then show that when compositional semantics is required to be "systematic" (that is, the meaning function cannot be arbitrary, b...
cmp-lg/9503025
Co-occurrence Vectors from Corpora vs. Distance Vectors from Dictionaries
cmp-lg cs.CL
A comparison was made of vectors derived by using ordinary co-occurrence statistics from large text corpora and of vectors derived by measuring the inter-word distances in dictionary definitions. The precision of word sense disambiguation by using co-occurrence vectors from the 1987 Wall Street Journal (20M total wor...
cmp-lg/9504001
Automatic processing proper names in texts
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper shows first the problems raised by proper names in natural language processing. Second, it introduces the knowledge representation structure we use based on conceptual graphs. Then it explains the techniques which are used to process known and unknown proper names. At last, it gives the performance of the ...
cmp-lg/9504002
Tagset Design and Inflected Languages
cmp-lg cs.CL
An experiment designed to explore the relationship between tagging accuracy and the nature of the tagset is described, using corpora in English, French and Swedish. In particular, the question of internal versus external criteria for tagset design is considered, with the general conclusion that external (linguistic) ...
cmp-lg/9504003
Collaborating on Referring Expressions
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper presents a computational model of how conversational participants collaborate in order to make a referring action successful. The model is based on the view of language as goal-directed behavior. We propose that the content of a referring expression can be accounted for by the planning paradigm. Not only d...
cmp-lg/9504004
A Computational Treatment of HPSG Lexical Rules as Covariation in Lexical Entries
cmp-lg cs.CL
We describe a compiler which translates a set of HPSG lexical rules and their interaction into definite relations used to constrain lexical entries. The compiler ensures automatic transfer of properties unchanged by a lexical rule. Thus an operational semantics for the full lexical rule mechanism as used in HPSG ling...
cmp-lg/9504005
Constraint Logic Programming for Natural Language Processing
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper proposes an evaluation of the adequacy of the constraint logic programming paradigm for natural language processing. Theoretical aspects of this question have been discussed in several works. We adopt here a pragmatic point of view and our argumentation relies on concrete solutions. Using actual contraints...
cmp-lg/9504006
Cues and control in Expert-Client Dialogues
cmp-lg cs.CL
We conducted an empirical analysis into the relation between control and discourse structure. We applied control criteria to four dialogues and identified 3 levels of discourse structure. We investigated the mechanism for changing control between these structures and found that utterance type and not cue words predic...
cmp-lg/9504007
Mixed Initiative in Dialogue: An Investigation into Discourse Segmentation
cmp-lg cs.CL
Conversation between two people is usually of mixed-initiative, with control over the conversation being transferred from one person to another. We apply a set of rules for the transfer of control to 4 sets of dialogues consisting of a total of 1862 turns. The application of the control rules lets us derive domain-in...
cmp-lg/9504008
SKOPE: A connectionist/symbolic architecture of spoken Korean processing
cmp-lg cs.CL
Spoken language processing requires speech and natural language integration. Moreover, spoken Korean calls for unique processing methodology due to its linguistic characteristics. This paper presents SKOPE, a connectionist/symbolic spoken Korean processing engine, which emphasizes that: 1) connectionist and symbolic ...
cmp-lg/9504009
Abstract Machine for Typed Feature Structures
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper describes an abstract machine for linguistic formalisms that are based on typed feature structures, such as HPSG. The core design of the abstract machine is given in detail, including the compilation process from a high-level language to the abstract machine language and the implementation of the abstract ...
cmp-lg/9504010
MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD AND MINIMUM ENTROPY IDENTIFICATION OF GRAMMARS
cmp-lg cs.CL
Using the Thermodynamic Formalism, we introduce a Gibbsian model for the identification of regular grammars based only on positive evidence. This model mimics the natural language acquisition procedure driven by prosody which is here represented by the thermodynamical potential. The statistical question we face is ho...
cmp-lg/9504011
A Processing Model for Free Word Order Languages
cmp-lg cs.CL
Like many verb-final languages, Germn displays considerable word-order freedom: there is no syntactic constraint on the ordering of the nominal arguments of a verb, as long as the verb remains in final position. This effect is referred to as ``scrambling'', and is interpreted in transformational frameworks as leftwar...
cmp-lg/9504012
Linear Logic for Meaning Assembly
cmp-lg cs.CL
Semantic theories of natural language associate meanings with utterances by providing meanings for lexical items and rules for determining the meaning of larger units given the meanings of their parts. Meanings are often assumed to combine via function application, which works well when constituent structure trees ar...
cmp-lg/9504013
NLG vs. Templates
cmp-lg cs.CL
One of the most important questions in applied NLG is what benefits (or `value-added', in business-speak) NLG technology offers over template-based approaches. Despite the importance of this question to the applied NLG community, however, it has not been discussed much in the research NLG community, which I think is ...
cmp-lg/9504014
LexGram - a practical categorial grammar formalism -
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present the LexGram system, an amalgam of (Lambek) categorial grammar and Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and show that the grammar formalism it implements is a well-structured and useful tool for actual grammar development.
cmp-lg/9504015
Estimating Lexical Priors for Low-Frequency Syncretic Forms
cmp-lg cs.CL
Given a previously unseen form that is morphologically n-ways ambiguous, what is the best estimator for the lexical prior probabilities for the various functions of the form? We argue that the best estimator is provided by computing the relative frequencies of the various functions among the hapax legomena --- the fo...
cmp-lg/9504016
Memoization of Top Down Parsing
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper discusses the relationship between memoized top-down recognizers and chart parsers. It presents a version of memoization suitable for continuation-passing style programs. When applied to a simple formalization of a top-down recognizer it yields a terminating parser.
cmp-lg/9504017
A Uniform Treatment of Pragmatic Inferences in Simple and Complex Utterances and Sequences of Utterances
cmp-lg cs.CL
Drawing appropriate defeasible inferences has been proven to be one of the most pervasive puzzles of natural language processing and a recurrent problem in pragmatics. This paper provides a theoretical framework, called ``stratified logic'', that can accommodate defeasible pragmatic inferences. The framework yields a...
cmp-lg/9504018
An Implemented Formalism for Computing Linguistic Presuppositions and Existential Commitments
cmp-lg cs.CL
We rely on the strength of linguistic and philosophical perspectives in constructing a framework that offers a unified explanation for presuppositions and existential commitment. We use a rich ontology and a set of methodological principles that embed the essence of Meinong's philosophy and Grice's conversational pri...
cmp-lg/9504019
A Formalism and an Algorithm for Computing Pragmatic Inferences and Detecting Infelicities
cmp-lg cs.CL
Since Austin introduced the term ``infelicity'', the linguistic literature has been flooded with its use, but no formal or computational explanation has been given for it. This thesis provides one for those infelicities that occur when a pragmatic inference is cancelled. Our contribution assumes the existence of a ...
cmp-lg/9504020
Computational Interpretations of the Gricean Maxims in the Generation of Referring Expressions
cmp-lg cs.CL
We examine the problem of generating definite noun phrases that are appropriate referring expressions; i.e, noun phrases that (1) successfully identify the intended referent to the hearer whilst (2) not conveying to her any false conversational implicatures (Grice, 1975). We review several possible computational inte...
cmp-lg/9504021
Phonological Derivation in Optimality Theory
cmp-lg cs.CL
Optimality Theory is a constraint-based theory of phonology which allows constraints to be violated. Consequently, implementing the theory presents problems for declarative constraint-based processing frameworks. On the basis of two regularity assumptions, that candidate sets are regular and that constraints can be m...
cmp-lg/9504022
Constraints, Exceptions and Representations
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper shows that default-based phonologies have the potential to capture morphophonological generalisations which cannot be captured by non-defaul theories. In achieving this result, I offer a characterisation of Underspecification Theory and Optimality Theory in terms of their methods for ordering defaults. The...
cmp-lg/9504023
TAKTAG: Two-phase learning method for hybrid statistical/rule-based part-of-speech disambiguation
cmp-lg cs.CL
Both statistical and rule-based approaches to part-of-speech (POS) disambiguation have their own advantages and limitations. Especially for Korean, the narrow windows provided by hidden markov model (HMM) cannot cover the necessary lexical and long-distance dependencies for POS disambiguation. On the other hand, the ...
cmp-lg/9504024
A Morphographemic Model for Error Correction in Nonconcatenative Strings
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper introduces a spelling correction system which integrates seamlessly with morphological analysis using a multi-tape formalism. Handling of various Semitic error problems is illustrated, with reference to Arabic and Syriac examples. The model handles errors vocalisation, diacritics, phonetic syncopation and ...
cmp-lg/9504025
Discourse Processing of Dialogues with Multiple Threads
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper we will present our ongoing work on a plan-based discourse processor developed in the context of the Enthusiast Spanish to English translation system as part of the JANUS multi-lingual speech-to-speech translation system. We will demonstrate that theories of discourse which postulate a strict tree struc...
cmp-lg/9504026
The intersection of Finite State Automata and Definite Clause Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
Bernard Lang defines parsing as the calculation of the intersection of a FSA (the input) and a CFG. Viewing the input for parsing as a FSA rather than as a string combines well with some approaches in speech understanding systems, in which parsing takes a word lattice as input (rather than a word string). Furthermore...
cmp-lg/9504027
An Efficient Generation Algorithm for Lexicalist MT
cmp-lg cs.CL
The lexicalist approach to Machine Translation offers significant advantages in the development of linguistic descriptions. However, the Shake-and-Bake generation algorithm of (Whitelock, COLING-92) is NP-complete. We present a polynomial time algorithm for lexicalist MT generation provided that sufficient informatio...
cmp-lg/9504028
Memoization of Coroutined Constraints
cmp-lg cs.CL
Some linguistic constraints cannot be effectively resolved during parsing at the location in which they are most naturally introduced. This paper shows how constraints can be propagated in a memoizing parser (such as a chart parser) in much the same way that variable bindings are, providing a general treatment of con...
cmp-lg/9504029
Quantifiers, Anaphora, and Intensionality
cmp-lg cs.CL
The relationship between Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) {\em functional structures} (f-structures) for sentences and their semantic interpretations can be expressed directly in a fragment of linear logic in a way that correctly explains the constrained interactions between quantifier scope ambiguity, bound anaphora...
cmp-lg/9504030
Statistical Decision-Tree Models for Parsing
cmp-lg cs.CL
Syntactic natural language parsers have shown themselves to be inadequate for processing highly-ambiguous large-vocabulary text, as is evidenced by their poor performance on domains like the Wall Street Journal, and by the movement away from parsing-based approaches to text-processing in general. In this paper, I des...
cmp-lg/9504031
Error-tolerant Finite State Recognition with Applications to Morphological Analysis and Spelling Correction
cmp-lg cs.CL
Error-tolerant recognition enables the recognition of strings that deviate mildly from any string in the regular set recognized by the underlying finite state recognizer. Such recognition has applications in error-tolerant morphological processing, spelling correction, and approximate string matching in information r...
cmp-lg/9504032
The Replace Operator
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper introduces to the calculus of regular expressions a replace operator, ->, and defines a set of replacement expressions that concisely encode several alternate variations of the operation. The basic case is unconditional obligatory replacement: UPPER -> LOWER Conditional versions of replacement, such ...
cmp-lg/9504033
Corpus Statistics Meet the Noun Compound: Some Empirical Results
cmp-lg cs.CL
A variety of statistical methods for noun compound analysis are implemented and compared. The results support two main conclusions. First, the use of conceptual association not only enables a broad coverage, but also improves the accuracy. Second, an analysis model based on dependency grammar is substantially more ac...
cmp-lg/9504034
Bayesian Grammar Induction for Language Modeling
cmp-lg cs.CL
We describe a corpus-based induction algorithm for probabilistic context-free grammars. The algorithm employs a greedy heuristic search within a Bayesian framework, and a post-pass using the Inside-Outside algorithm. We compare the performance of our algorithm to n-gram models and the Inside-Outside algorithm in thre...
cmp-lg/9505001
Response Generation in Collaborative Negotiation
cmp-lg cs.CL
In collaborative planning activities, since the agents are autonomous and heterogeneous, it is inevitable that conflicts arise in their beliefs during the planning process. In cases where such conflicts are relevant to the task at hand, the agents should engage in collaborative negotiation as an attempt to square awa...
cmp-lg/9505002
New Techniques for Context Modeling
cmp-lg cs.CL
We introduce three new techniques for statistical language models: extension modeling, nonmonotonic contexts, and the divergence heuristic. Together these techniques result in language models that have few states, even fewer parameters, and low message entropies. For example, our techniques achieve a message entropy ...
cmp-lg/9505003
Compiling HPSG type constraints into definite clause programs
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present a new approach to HPSG processing: compiling HPSG grammars expressed as type constraints into definite clause programs. This provides a clear and computationally useful correspondence between linguistic theories and their implementation. The compiler performs off-line constraint inheritance and code optimi...
cmp-lg/9505004
DATR Theories and DATR Models
cmp-lg cs.CL
Evans and Gazdar introduced DATR as a simple, non-monotonic language for representing natural language lexicons. Although a number of implementations of DATR exist, the full language has until now lacked an explicit, declarative semantics. This paper rectifies the situation by providing a mathematical semantics for D...
cmp-lg/9505005
Learning Syntactic Rules and Tags with Genetic Algorithms for Information Retrieval and Filtering: An Empirical Basis for Grammatical Rules
cmp-lg cs.CL
The grammars of natural languages may be learned by using genetic algorithms that reproduce and mutate grammatical rules and part-of-speech tags, improving the quality of later generations of grammatical components. Syntactic rules are randomly generated and then evolve; those rules resulting in improved parsing and ...
cmp-lg/9505006
Treating Coordination with Datalog Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
In previous work we studied a new type of DCGs, Datalog grammars, which are inspired on database theory. Their efficiency was shown to be better than that of their DCG counterparts under (terminating) OLDT-resolution. In this article we motivate a variant of Datalog grammars which allows us a meta-grammatical treatme...
cmp-lg/9505007
Parsing a Flexible Word Order Language
cmp-lg cs.CL
A logic formalism is presented which increases the expressive power of the ID/LP format of GPSG by enlarging the inventory of ordering relations and extending the domain of their application to non-siblings. This allows a concise, modular and declarative statement of intricate word order regularities.
cmp-lg/9505008
Conciseness through Aggregation in Text Generation
cmp-lg cs.CL
Aggregating different pieces of similar information is necessary to generate concise and easy to understand reports in technical domains. This paper presents a general algorithm that combines similar messages in order to generate one or more coherent sentences for them. The process is not as trivial as might be expec...
cmp-lg/9505009
Compilation of HPSG to TAG
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present an implemented compilation algorithm that translates HPSG into lexicalized feature-based TAG, relating concepts of the two theories. While HPSG has a more elaborated principle-based theory of possible phrase structures, TAG provides the means to represent lexicalized structures more explicitly. Our objecti...
cmp-lg/9505010
Tagset Reduction Without Information Loss
cmp-lg cs.CL
A technique for reducing a tagset used for n-gram part-of-speech disambiguation is introduced and evaluated in an experiment. The technique ensures that all information that is provided by the original tagset can be restored from the reduced one. This is crucial, since we are interested in the linguistically motivate...
cmp-lg/9505011
Evaluation of Semantic Clusters
cmp-lg cs.CL
Semantic clusters of a domain form an important feature that can be useful for performing syntactic and semantic disambiguation. Several attempts have been made to extract the semantic clusters of a domain by probabilistic or taxonomic techniques. However, not much progress has been made in evaluating the obtained se...
cmp-lg/9505012
A Symbolic and Surgical Acquisition of Terms through Variation
cmp-lg cs.CL
Terminological acquisition is an important issue in learning for NLP due to the constant terminological renewal through technological changes. Terms play a key role in several NLP-activities such as machine translation, automatic indexing or text understanding. In opposition to classical once-and-for-all approaches, ...
cmp-lg/9505013
Utilizing Statistical Dialogue Act Processing in Verbmobil
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper, we present a statistical approach for dialogue act processing in the dialogue component of the speech-to-speech translation system \vm. Statistics in dialogue processing is used to predict follow-up dialogue acts. As an application example we show how it supports repair when unexpected dialogue states ...
cmp-lg/9505014
Compositionality for Presuppositions over Tableaux
cmp-lg cs.CL
Tableaux originate as a decision method for a logical language. They can also be extended to obtain a structure that spells out all the information in a set of sentences in terms of truth value assignments to atomic formulas that appear in them. This approach is pursued here. Over such a structure, compositional rule...
cmp-lg/9505015
Efficient Analysis of Complex Diagrams using Constraint-Based Parsing
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper describes substantial advances in the analysis (parsing) of diagrams using constraint grammars. The addition of set types to the grammar and spatial indexing of the data make it possible to efficiently parse real diagrams of substantial complexity. The system is probably the first to demonstrate efficient ...
cmp-lg/9505016
A Pattern Matching method for finding Noun and Proper Noun Translations from Noisy Parallel Corpora
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present a pattern matching method for compiling a bilingual lexicon of nouns and proper nouns from unaligned, noisy parallel texts of Asian/Indo-European language pairs. Tagging information of one language is used. Word frequency and position information for high and low frequency words are represented in two diff...
cmp-lg/9505017
Robust Parsing of Spoken Dialogue Using Contextual Knowledge and Recognition Probabilities
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper we describe the linguistic processor of a spoken dialogue system. The parser receives a word graph from the recognition module as its input. Its task is to find the best path through the graph. If no complete solution can be found, a robust mechanism for selecting multiple partial results is applied. We...
cmp-lg/9505018
Acquiring a Lexicon from Unsegmented Speech
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present work-in-progress on the machine acquisition of a lexicon from sentences that are each an unsegmented phone sequence paired with a primitive representation of meaning. A simple exploratory algorithm is described, along with the direction of current work and a discussion of the relevance of the problem for c...
cmp-lg/9505019
Measuring semantic complexity
cmp-lg cs.CL
We define {\em semantic complexity} using a new concept of {\em meaning automata}. We measure the semantic complexity of understanding of prepositional phrases, of an "in depth understanding system", and of a natural language interface to an on-line calendar. We argue that it is possible to measure some semantic comp...
cmp-lg/9505020
CRYSTAL: Inducing a Conceptual Dictionary
cmp-lg cs.CL
One of the central knowledge sources of an information extraction system is a dictionary of linguistic patterns that can be used to identify the conceptual content of a text. This paper describes CRYSTAL, a system which automatically induces a dictionary of "concept-node definitions" sufficient to identify relevant i...
cmp-lg/9505021
Improving the Efficiency of a Generation Algorithm for Shake and Bake Machine Translation Using Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar
cmp-lg cs.CL
A Shake and Bake machine translation algorithm for Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar is introduced based on the algorithm proposed by Whitelock for unification categorial grammar. The translation process is then analysed to determine where the potential sources of inefficiency reside, and some proposals are introd...
cmp-lg/9505022
Generating One-Anaphoric Expressions: Where Does the Decision Lie?
cmp-lg cs.CL
Most natural language generation systems embody mechanisms for choosing whether to subsequently refer to an already-introduced entity by means of a pronoun or a definite noun phrase. Relatively few systems, however, consider referring to entites by means of one-anaphoric expressions such as \lingform{the small green ...
cmp-lg/9505023
Some Novel Applications of Explanation-Based Learning to Parsing Lexicalized Tree-Adjoining Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
In this paper we present some novel applications of Explanation-Based Learning (EBL) technique to parsing Lexicalized Tree-Adjoining grammars. The novel aspects are (a) immediate generalization of parses in the training set, (b) generalization over recursive structures and (c) representation of generalized parses as ...
cmp-lg/9505024
Exploring the role of Punctuation in Parsing Natural Text
cmp-lg cs.CL
Few, if any, current NLP systems make any significant use of punctuation. Intuitively, a treatment of punctuation seems necessary to the analysis and production of text. Whilst this has been suggested in the fields of discourse structure, it is still unclear whether punctuation can help in the syntactic field. This i...
cmp-lg/9505025
Combining Multiple Knowledge Sources for Discourse Segmentation
cmp-lg cs.CL
We predict discourse segment boundaries from linguistic features of utterances, using a corpus of spoken narratives as data. We present two methods for developing segmentation algorithms from training data: hand tuning and machine learning. When multiple types of features are used, results approach human performance ...
cmp-lg/9505026
Tagging the Teleman Corpus
cmp-lg cs.CL
Experiments were carried out comparing the Swedish Teleman and the English Susanne corpora using an HMM-based and a novel reductionistic statistical part-of-speech tagger. They indicate that tagging the Teleman corpus is the more difficult task, and that the performance of the two different taggers is comparable.
cmp-lg/9505027
Quantifier Scope and Constituency
cmp-lg cs.CL
Traditional approaches to quantifier scope typically need stipulation to exclude readings that are unavailable to human understanders. This paper shows that quantifier scope phenomena can be precisely characterized by a semantic representation constrained by surface constituency, if the distinction between referentia...
cmp-lg/9505028
D-Tree Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
DTG are designed to share some of the advantages of TAG while overcoming some of its limitations. DTG involve two composition operations called subsertion and sister-adjunction. The most distinctive feature of DTG is that, unlike TAG, there is complete uniformity in the way that the two DTG operations relate lexical ...
cmp-lg/9505029
Mapping Scrambled Korean Sentences into English Using Synchronous TAGs
cmp-lg cs.CL
Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammars can be used for Machine Translation. However, translating a free order language such as Korean to English is complicated. I present a mechanism to translate scrambled Korean sentences into English by combining the concepts of Multi-Component TAGs (MC-TAGs) and Synchronous TAGs (STA...
cmp-lg/9505030
Encoding Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammars with a Nonmonotonic Inheritance Hierarchy
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper shows how DATR, a widely used formal language for lexical knowledge representation, can be used to define an LTAG lexicon as an inheritance hierarchy with internal lexical rules. A bottom-up featural encoding is used for LTAG trees and this allows lexical rules to be implemented as covariation constraints ...
cmp-lg/9505031
The Compactness of Construction Grammars
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present an argument for {\em construction grammars} based on the minimum description length (MDL) principle (a formal version of the Ockham Razor). The argument consists in using linguistic and computational evidence in setting up a formal model, and then applying the MDL principle to prove its superiority with re...
cmp-lg/9505032
Context and ontology in understanding of dialogs
cmp-lg cs.CL
We present a model of NLP in which ontology and context are directly included in a grammar. The model is based on the concept of {\em construction}, consisting of a set of features of form, a set of semantic and pragmatic conditions describing its application context, and a description of its meaning. In this model o...
cmp-lg/9505033
User-Defined Nonmonotonicity in Unification-Based Formalisms
cmp-lg cs.CL
A common feature of recent unification-based grammar formalisms is that they give the user the ability to define his own structures. However, this possibility is mostly limited and does not include nonmonotonic operations. In this paper we show how nonmonotonic operations can also be user-defined by applying default ...
cmp-lg/9505034
Semantic Ambiguity and Perceived Ambiguity
cmp-lg cs.CL
I explore some of the issues that arise when trying to establish a connection between the underspecification hypothesis pursued in the NLP literature and work on ambiguity in semantics and in the psychological literature. A theory of underspecification is developed `from the first principles', i.e., starting from a d...
cmp-lg/9505035
Development of a Spanish Version of the Xerox Tagger
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper describes work performed withing the CRATER ({\em C}orpus {\em R}esources {\em A}nd {\em T}erminology {\em E}xt{\em R}action, MLAP-93/20) project, funded by the Commission of the European Communities. In particular, it addresses the issue of adapting the Xerox Tagger to Spanish in order to tag the Spanish ...
cmp-lg/9505036
Integrating Gricean and Attentional Constraints
cmp-lg cs.CL
This paper concerns how to generate and understand discourse anaphoric noun phrases. I present the results of an analysis of all discourse anaphoric noun phrases (N=1,233) in a corpus of ten narrative monologues, where the choice between a definite pronoun or phrasal NP conforms largely to Gricean constraints on info...
cmp-lg/9505037
Identifying Word Translations in Non-Parallel Texts
cmp-lg cs.CL
Common algorithms for sentence and word-alignment allow the automatic identification of word translations from parallel texts. This study suggests that the identification of word translations should also be possible with non-parallel and even unrelated texts. The method proposed is based on the assumption that there ...
cmp-lg/9505038
Ubiquitous Talker: Spoken Language Interaction with Real World Objects
cmp-lg cs.CL
Augmented reality is a research area that tries to embody an electronic information space within the real world, through computational devices. A crucial issue within this area, is the recognition of real world objects or situations. In natural language processing, it is much easier to determine interpretations of ...
cmp-lg/9505039
Generating efficient belief models for task-oriented dialogues
cmp-lg cs.CL
We have shown that belief modelling for dialogue can be simplified if the assumption is made that the participants are cooperating, i.e., they are not committed to any goals requiring deception. In such domains, there is no need to maintain individual representations of deeply nested beliefs; instead, three specific ...
cmp-lg/9505040
Text Chunking using Transformation-Based Learning
cmp-lg cs.CL
Eric Brill introduced transformation-based learning and showed that it can do part-of-speech tagging with fairly high accuracy. The same method can be applied at a higher level of textual interpretation for locating chunks in the tagged text, including non-recursive ``baseNP'' chunks. For this purpose, it is convenie...