© Ch. Boitet & Wang-Ju Tsai (GETA, CLIPS) ICUKL-2002, Goa, 25-29/11/02 1 Proposals for solving some problems in UNL encoding International Conference on

© Ch. Boitet & Wang-Ju Tsai (GETA, CLIPS) ICUKL-2002, Goa, 25-29/11/021

Proposals for solving some problems in UNL encoding

International Conference on Universal Knowledge and Language (ICUKL2002), Goa, 25-29 November 2002

Christian BOITET

GETA, CLIPS, IMAG, Grenoble

[email protected]


Which problems?

What Igor said "remains to be done"1. representation of multi-word concepts (« long

UWs »);

2. elliptical expressions;

3. treatment of arguments both in the UW dictionary and in the UNL expressions

and 1. conventions about attributes

2. XML formats for UNL documents


Representation of multi-word concepts (long UWs) — 1

Problematic examples of "UNKNOWN LONG UWs""Institute of Advanced studies (UNU/IAS)"(icl>…)

"Institute of Advanced studies (UNU/IAS)"(icl>…)

"East-Asia cooperation office"

East-Asia cooperation office

east-asia cooperation office(icl>…)

"Tokyo University"

"University of Kyoto"

"World Bank(icl>…)"


Representation of long UWs — 2

What are the problems?1. No hope of including all these long UWs in our

UNL-LLL dictionaries because of potentially immense, unbounded number of

such UWs Maybe never more than 5%, 10% of them in open

domains

2. Necessity to include an analyzer of English compounds in order to translate "unknown long UWs" piece by piece. but such compounds are extremely ambiguous


Let us think a bit more

Proper nouns CAN be decomposed. This is NOT to say that their translation is always

compositional.Compositional: World Bank ==> Banque du

Monde false

Idiomatic: World Bank ==> Banque mondiale correct

So that we should have a solution allowing BOTHCompositional deconversion if the long UW is

unknown

Idiomatic deconversion after it put in the UNL-LLL dictionary


Proposal of a solution

Origin Proposed by H.Uchida at a meeting in Tokyo (1999?) Not yet included but still needed and still the best

Principle Headword encodes a UNL representation of the

compound

Possible syntax"(mod(bank(icl>entity).@entry,world):01)"(icl> entity)

"(mod(bank(icl> entity).@entry,world))"(icl> entity)

… or a better one!


How to deconvert Case 1:

"(mod(bank(icl>institution).@entry,world))"(icl>institution)is not in the UNL-FR dictionary

==> French deconverter "unwraps" mod(bank(icl>institution).@entry,world)

into a scope of the UNL-graph


Another example

«"(mod(university.@entry,Tokyo(icl>town)):01)"(icl>entity)»

Compositional deconversion Université de Tokyo University of Tokyo Universität von Tokyo Tokyo no daigaku (or Tokyo ni daigaku)

Idiomatic deconversion Université de Tokyo (or Todai!) Tokyo University / University of Tokyo Universität Tokyo Tokyo daigaku / Todai


Elliptical expressions

ExampleDo you prefer the first or the second solution?I prefer the first.

Je préfère le premier? Je préfère la première?

==> A bad deconversion will be very misleading.

Possible solutionEncode the elided element and put .@eld on it.That is equivalent to "preedit" the input text

I prefer the first <eld>solution</eld>.

…and in the spirit of the new idea by H.Uchida of preediting for semantic relations


Treatment of arguments

in the UW dictionary in the UNL expressions

See talk by I.Bogulslavskij The solution proposed entails

1. a very small change in the UNL syntax Allow attributes .@A, .@B, .@C, .@D on arcs

hence also on restrictions by sem.rel.

2. a discipline in the UW creation all arguments should appear as restrictions


"Argument-full" + "readable" UW

Argument-fulllook(icl>do,agt.@A>person,obj.@B>thing);

look(icl>do,agt.@A>person,gol.@B>thing);

look(icl>do,agt.@A>person,dst.@B>thing);

Readablelook(icl>do, agt.@A>person, obj.@B>thing);look for

something

Even more readablelook for(icl>do,agt .@A>person, obj.@B>thing);look for

something


Continuing that list…

look for(icl>do,agt.@A>person, obj.@B>thing);look for something

look at(icl>do,agt.@A>person, plt.@B>thing);look at somethingor

look at(icl>do,agt.@A>person, obj.@B>thing);look at something

look like(icl>do,agt.@A>person, cmp.@B>thing);look like something

look like(icl>do,agt.@A>person, obj.@B>thing);look like somethingmight also cover "look as" in "he looks as a good man"

or

look as if(icl>do,agt.@A>person, obj.@B>thing);it looks as if…

look(icl>do,agt.@A>person, obj.@B>thing);look for something


Attributes

The problemlion(icl>mammal).@plur

==> un lion, les lions, lions? We don't know whether definiteness

has been computed ==> it is .@undef ==> use itor not ==> it is UNKNOWN ==> compute default

Solution: for every attribute XXXX, put.@XXXX for +XXXX (1 or true).@unXXXX for -XXXX (0 or false)nothing for XXXX unknown (? or undefined)


XML formats for UNL documents

A minimal UNL-xml format strictly equivalent of UNL-htmlr– proposed & used by Tsai W.J. for the SWIIVRE-UNL web

site & his Ph.D. Methodology for defining and using other, more

detailed UNL-xml-xyz formats: – xyz is an application (e.g. a graphical editor, or statistics-

gathering tool, etc.), – Automatic parsing of the basic UNL-xml format introduces

new tags, – An object document model (DOM) suitable for application

xyz can then be defined and used.

Documents

© Ch. Boitet & Wang-Ju Tsai (GETA, CLIPS) ICUKL-2002, Goa, 25-29/11/02 1 Proposals for solving some problems in UNL encoding International Conference on