Automatic Representation of the Semantic Relationships Corresponding to a French Surface Expression

AUTOMATIC REPRESENTATION OF T~E SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS CORRESPONDING TO A FRENCH SURFACE EXPRESSION Gian Plato Zarrl Centre National de la Recherche Sclentlflqua Laboratolra d'informatiqua pour 1as Sciences de l'So---e 54, Boulevard Raspall 75270 Paris Cedax 06 FRANCE ABSTRACT The work presented here is a preliminary sn~y concerning the automatic translation of French natural language statements into the RESEDA seman- tic metalanguage. The text in natural language is first (pre)processed in order to obtain its syntac- tic structure. The "semantic parsing" process begins with marking the "triggers", defined as lexical units which call one or more of the predi- cative patterns allowed for in the metalanguage. The patterns obtained are then merged, and their case slots filled with the elements found in the surface structure according to the predictions associated with the slots. I INTRODUCTION The work that I intend to presen~ here is a preliminary study concerning the automatic trans- lation of French natural language statements into the RESEDA semantic language. The RESEDA project itself is concerned with the creation and practical exploltation of a system for managing a biographical database using Arti- flcial Intelligence (AI) techniques. The term "biographical data" must be understood in its widest possible sense : being in fact any event, in the public or private Ills, physical or intellectual, etc., that it is possible to gather about the personages we are interested in. In the present state of the system, this information concerns a well-defined period in time (approximately between 1350 and 1450) and a particular subject area (French history), but we are now working on the adaptation of RESEDA's methodology to the process- ing of other biographical data, for example medical or legal data. RESEDA differs from "classical" factual data- base management systems in two ways: - The information is recorded in the base using a particular Data Definition Language (metalan- guage) which uses knowledge representation techniques. - A user interrogating the base obtains not only information which has been directly introduced This research is Jointly financsd by the "Agmnce de l'Informatique - A.D.I." (CNRS/ADI contract n ° 507568) and the "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - C.N.R.S." (ATP n ° 955045). into it, but also "hidden" information found using inference mechanisms particular to the system : in this respect, the most important character- Istic of the system lies in the Possibility of using inference procedures to question the data- base about causal relationships which may exist between the different recorded facts, and which are not explicitly declared at the time of data entry (Zarrl, 1979;1981). For example, the system may try to explain by inference top-level changes in the State administration in terms of changes in Political power. II T~E RESEDA METALANGUAGE The biographical information which consti- tutes the systea's database is organized in the form of units called "planes". There are several different types of plane, sea Zarri e_~ al..L. (1977); the "predicative planes", the most important, cor- respond to a "flash" which illustrates a partlcu- lam mament in the "Ills story" …

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