Flexible and Creative Chinese Poetry Generation Using Neural Memory

Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 1364–1373 Vancouver, Canada, July 30 - August 4, 2017. c⃝2017 Association for Computational Linguistics https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/P17-1125 Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 1364–1373 Vancouver, Canada, July 30 - August 4, 2017. c⃝2017 Association for Computational Linguistics https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/P17-1125 Flexible and Creative Chinese Poetry Generation Using Neural Memory Jiyuan Zhang1,2, Yang Feng3,1,4, Dong Wang1∗, Yang Wang1, Andrew Abel6, Shiyue Zhang1,5, Andi Zhang1,5 1Center for Speech and Language Technologies(CSLT), RIIT, Tsinghua University, China 2Shool of Software & Microelectronics, Peking University, China 3Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing,Institute of Computing Technology,CAS 4Huilan Limited, Beijing, China 5Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China 6Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China zhangjy ml@pku.edu.cn, wangdong99@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn Abstract It has been shown that Chinese po- ems can be successfully generated by sequence-to-sequence neural models, par- ticularly with the attention mechanism. A potential problem of this approach, how- ever, is that neural models can only learn abstract rules, while poem generation is a highly creative process that involves not only rules but also innovations for which pure statistical models are not appropri- ate in principle. This work proposes a memory-augmented neural model for Chi- nese poem generation, where the neural model and the augmented memory work together to balance the requirements of linguistic accordance and aesthetic inno- vation, leading to innovative generations that are still rule-compliant. In addition, it is found that the memory mechanis- m provides interesting flexibility that can be used to generate poems with different styles. 1 Introduction Classical Chinese poetry is a special cultural her- itage with over 2,000 years of history and is stil- l fascinating us today. Among the various gen- res, perhaps the most popular one is the quatrain, a special style with a strict structure (four lines with five or seven characters per line), a regulat- ed rhythmical form (the last characters in the sec- ond and fourth lines must follow the same rhyth- m), and a required tonal pattern (tones of charac- ters in some positions should satisfy a predefined regulation) (Wang, 2002). This genre flourished mostly in the Tang Dynasty, and so are often called 1Corresponding author: Dong Wang; RM 1-303, FIT BLDG, Tsinghua University, Beijing (100084), P.R. China. ‘Tang poems’. An example of a quatrain written by Wei Wang, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty, is shown in Table 1. Due to the stringent restrictions in both rhyth- m and tone, it is not trivial to create a ful- ly rule-compliant quatrain. More importantly, besides such strict regulations, a good quatrain should also read fluently, hold a consistent theme, and express a unique affection. Therefore, poem generation is widely recognized as a very intelli- gent activity and can be performed only by knowl- edgeable people with a lot of training. Wi� Climbing the Paradise Mound •�¿Ø·§ (* Z Z P Z) As I was not in a good mood this evening round, °•���"(P P P Z P) I went by cart to …

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