Articles

We show that feature logic extended by functional uncertainty is decidable, even if one admits cyclic descriptions. We present an algorithm, which solves feature descriptions containing functional un- certainty in two phases, both phases using a set of de- terministic and non-deterministic rewrite rules. We then compare our algorithm with …...

Various feature descriptions are being employed in constrained-based grammar formalisms. The com- mon notational primitive of these descriptions are functional attributes called features. The descrip- tions considered in this paper are the possibly quan- tified first-order formulae obtained from a signature of features and sorts. We establish a complete first- …...

We describe and evaluate experimentally a method for clustering words according to their dis- tribution in particular syntactic contexts. Words are represented by the relative frequency distribu- tions of contexts in which they appear, and rela- tive entropy between those distributions is used as the similarity measure for clustering. Clusters …...

In this paper we present a method to group adjectives according to their meaning, as a first step towards the automatic identification of adjectival scales. We discuss the properties of adjectival scales and of groups of semantically related adjectives and how they imply sources of linguistic knowledge in text corpora. …...

This paper describes a new discourse module within our multilingual NLP system. Because of its unique data-driven architecture, the discourse module is language-independent. Moreover, the use of hierarchically organized multiple knowledge sources makes the module robust and trainable using discourse-tagged corpora. Separating discourse phe- nomena from knowledge sources makes the …...

In recent years there is much interest in word cooccurrence relations, such as n-grams, verb- object combinations, or cooccurrence within a limited context. This paper discusses how to estimate the probability of cooccurrences that do not occur in the training data. We present a method that makes local analogies between …...

Certain spans of utterances in a discourse, referred to here as segments, are widely assumedto form coherent units. Further, the segmental structure of discourse has been claimed to constrain and be constrained by many phenomena. However, there is weak consensus on the nature of segments and the criteria for recognizing …...

A number of grammatical formalisms were intro- duced to define the syntax of natural languages. Among them are parallel multiple context-free grammars (pmcfg's) and lexical-functional gram- mars (lfg's). Pmcfg's and their subclass called multiple context-free grammars (mcfg's) are nat- ural extensions of cfg's, and pmcfg's are known to be recognizable …...

Overgeneration is the main source of computational complexity in previous principle-based parsers. This paper presents a message passing algorithm for principle-based parsing that avoids the overgenera- tion problem. This algorithm has been implemented in C++ and successfully tested with example sen- tences from (van Riemsdijk and Williams, 1986). 1....

There is a need to develop a suitable computational grammar formalism for free word order languages for two reasons: First, a suitably designed formal- ism is likely to be more efficient. Second, such a formalism is also likely to be linguistically more ele- gant and satisfying. In this paper, we …...

We present an implemented unification-based parser for relational grammars developed within the stratified feature grammar (SFG) frame- work, which generalizes Kasper-Rounds logic to handle relational grammar analyses. We first in- troduce the key aspects of SFG and a lexicalized, graph-based variant of the framework suitable for implementing relational grammars. We …...

We propose a distinction between two kinds of metonymy: "referential" metonymy, in which the refer- ent of an NP is shifted, and "predicative" metonymy, in which the referent of the NP is unchanged and the ar- gument place of the predicate is shifted instead. Exam- ples are, respectively, "The hamburger …...

In this paper we describe a new technique for parsing free text: a transformational grammar I is automatically learned that is capable of accu- rately parsing text into binary-branching syntac- tic trees with nonterminals unlabelled. The algo- rithm works by beginning in a very naive state of knowledge about phrase …...

AbstractIn this paper, we introduce the methodology for the construction of dictionary fragments under development in DELIS. The approach advocated is corpus-based, computationally supported, and aimed at the construction of parallel monolingual dictionary fragments which can be linked to form translation dictionaries without many problems.The parallelism of the monolingual fragments …...

The IDAS natural-language generation system uses a KL-ONE type classifier to perform content determination, surface realisation, and part of text planning. Generation-by-classification allows IDAS to use a single representation and reasoning com- ponent for both domain and linguistic knowledge, which is difficult for systems based on unification or systemic generation …...

This paper discusses how a two-level knowledge rep- resentation model for machine translation integrates as- pectual information with lexical-semantic information by means of parameterization. The integration of aspect with lexical-semantics is especially critical in machine translation because of the lexical selection and aspec- tual realization processes that operate during the …...

A formalism will be presented in this paper which makes it possible to realise the idea of assigning only one scope-ambiguous representation to a sentence that is ambiguous with regard to quantifier scope. The scope determination results in extending this representation with additional context and world knowledge conditions. If there …...

We present a new compositional tense-aspect deindex- ing mechanism that makes use of tense trees as com- ponents of discourse contexts. The mechanism allows reference episodes to be correctly identified even for embedded clauses and for discourse that involves shifts in temporal perspective, and permits deindexed logical forms to be …...

This paper describes a natural language pro- cessing system reinforced by the use of associ- ation of words and concepts, implemented as a neural network. Combining an associative net- work with a conventional system contributes to semantic disambiguation in the process of interpretation. The model is employed within a kana-kanji …...

This paper presents a corpus-based approach for deriving heuristics to locate the antecedents of relative pronouns. The technique dupficates the performance of hand-coded rules and requires human intervention only during the training phase. Because the training instances are built on parser output rather than word cooccurrences, the technique requires a …...