Re: THEORY: Parsing for meaning.

This reply might not be exactly what you were looking for, but I was
wondering whether you've read the June 16th issue of the Economist, in
which is an article about machine translation. What the article said
was basically that scientists realised that the more efficient method
of machine translation was not by keying in numerous grammar rules and
vocabulary replacements, but through statistical analysis: let the
computer parse a text unguided and it will figure out which word is of
what function, and arrive at a set of rules and glosses itself,
replete with exceptions. I don't know how it works, but it sure sounds
fascinating.

Eugene

On 6/26/06, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> Looking back over an old conlang project called
> SOALOA, ( http://fiziwig.com/soaloa/soaloa.html ) it
> occured to me that the biggest obstacle to proper
> machine translation is extracting the real meaning of
> a sentence to be translated. As far as I know machine
> translation programs don't try to deal with "meaning",
> only with structure and dictionary replacements. If
> the meaning of a target sentence could be properly
> extracted and encoded then writing a decent sentence
> generator for any given language, based on basic
> standardized sentence patterns, would be relatively
> easy.
>
> But how to encode the information conveyed by a
> sentence? Taking a hint from SOALOA I tried to reduce
> any sentence, regardless of complexity, to a sequence
> of simple SVO sentences, each optionally beginning
> with a "linking word", which taken together encode the
> complete literal meaning (if not the literary nuances)
> of a sentence. Combining that idea with another of my
> old projects to build an automated parser (
> http://www.fiziwig.com/parser/parse1.html ) I thought
> it might be possible to iteratively deconstruct a
> sentence into a paraphrase in the form of a sequence
> of [L]SVO sentences by simple pattern matching.
>
> At each step a portion of the sentence is matched,
> replaced by the [L]SVO output sentence, and then
> removed from the original sentence leaving a simpler
> sentence to be further decomposed by the next
> iteration.
>
> Thus: We are watching the antics of this funny little
> monkey.
>
> Is paraphrased:
>
> We watch this: (SVO)
> That monkey performs antics. (LSVO)
> Same monkey is funny. (LSVO)
> Same monkey is little. (LSVO)
>
> These four sentences capture and encode in a standard
> format the complete meaning of the sentence.
>
> The pattern-matching steps would be (roughly):
>
> We are watching the antics of this funny --little
> monkey--. (Pattern adj+noun)
>         => Same monkey is little.
> We are watching the antics of this --funny monkey--.
> (Pattern adj+noun)
>         => Same monkey is funny.
> We are watching the --antics of this monkey--.
> (Idiomatic pattern)
>         => That monkey performs antics.
> --We are watching--
>         => We watch this:
>
> Another example:
>
> Mercury bound his winged sandals to his feet, and took
> his wand in his hand.
>
> Mercury caused this: (SVO)
> That sandals are_bound_to feet. (LSVO)
> Same feet belong_to Mercury. (LSVO)
> Same sandals belong_to Mercury. (LSVO)
> Same sandals have wings. (LSVO)
> Then Mercury caused this: (LSVO)
> That wand be_in hand. (LSVO)
> Same hand belongs_to Mercury. (LSVO)
> Same wand belongs_to Mercury. (LSVO)
>
> The pattern-matching steps are (roughly):
>
> Mercury bound his --winged sandals-- to his feet, and
> took his wand in his hand.
>         Same sandals have wings.
> Mercury bound --his sandals-- to his feet, and took
> his wand in his hand.
>         Same sandals belong_to Mercury.
> --Mercury bound sandals-- to his feet, and took his
> wand in his hand.
>         Mercury caused this:
> sandals bound to --his feet--, and took his wand in
> his hand.
>         Feet belong_to Mercury.
> --sandals bound to feet--, and took his wand in his
> hand.
>         That sandals be_bound_to feet.
> and took --his wand-- in --his hand--.
>         Wand belongs_to Mercury.
>         Hand belongs_to Mercury.
> --and took wand in hand--.
>         Then Mercury caused this:
> --wand in hand--.
>         That wand be_in hand.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --gary
>

Reply