Towards a Probabilistic Version of Bidirectional OT Syntax and Semantics

This paper argues that a purely probabilistic version of bidirectional Optimality-Theoretic syntax and semantics (Blutner 2000; Zeevat 2000) can make some significant contributions to the computational processing of natural language. The ideas outlined in this paper apply to interpretation as well as generation, but particular attention will be given to the question how bidirectionality can be put to use in Natural Language Generation. The paper sketches a number of different possible approaches, but one of them will be described in more detail, at the heart of which lies an empirically oriented notion of vicious ambiguity.

[1]  Mitchell P. Marcus,et al.  Adding Semantic Annotation to the Penn TreeBank , 1998 .

[2]  Andrew U. Frank,et al.  Optimality theory style constraint ranking in large-scale LFG grammars , 1998 .

[3]  Petra Hendriks,et al.  Optimality Theoretic Semantics , 2001 .

[4]  Ehud Reiter,et al.  Book Reviews: Building Natural Language Generation Systems , 2000, CL.

[5]  R.A.M. van Rooij,et al.  Relevance and bidirectional OT , 2003 .

[6]  Jeroen van de Weijer,et al.  Optimality theory : phonology, syntax, and acquisition , 2000 .

[7]  Daniel Jurafsky,et al.  A Probabilistic Model of Lexical and Syntactic Access and Disambiguation , 1996, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  Mark Johnson,et al.  Estimators for Stochastic “Unification-Based” Grammars , 1999, ACL.

[9]  Kees van Deemter.  Generating Referring Expressions: Boolean Extensions of the Incremental Algorithm , 2002, CL.

[10]  Giorgio Satta,et al.  Optimality Theory and the Generative Complexity of Constraint Violability , 1998, CL.

[11]  Günter Neumann,et al.  Interleaving Natural Language Parsing and Generation Through Uniform Processing , 1998, Artif. Intell..

[12]  Steven Abney,et al.  Statistical Methods and Linguistics , 2002 .

[13]  F. Landman.  Structures for semantics , 1991 .

[14]  Jason Eisner.  Phonological Comprehension and the Compilation of Optimality Theory , 2002, ACL.

[15]  M ShieberStuart,et al.  The problem of logical-form equivalence , 1993 .

[16]  Gerhard Jäger,et al.  Some Notes on the Formal Properties of Bidirectional Optimality Theory , 2002, J. Log. Lang. Inf..

[17]  Masoud Yazdani,et al.  Reviewing as a Component of the Text Generation Process , 1987 .

[18]  Miriam Butt,et al.  A grammar writer's cookbook , 1999 .

[19]  Ted Briscoe,et al.  Robust Accurate Statistical Annotation of General Text , 2002, LREC.

[20]  David I. Beaver,et al.  The Optimization of Discourse Anaphora , 2004 .

[21]  Dan Jurafsky,et al.  Probabilistic Modeling in Psycholinguistics: Linguistic Comprehension and Production , 2006 .

[22]  Robert van Rooy,et al.  Bi-Directional Optimality Theory: An Application of Game Theory , 2000, J. Semant..

[23]  Jonas Kuhn,et al.  Optimality-Theoretic Syntax: A Declarative Approach , 2003 .

[24]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  The Asymmetry of Optimality Theoretic Syntax and Semantics , 2000, J. Semant..

[25]  M. Maxwell.  A Grammar Writer's Cookbook by Miriam Butt, Tracy Holloway King, Maria-Eugenia Nino, and Frederique Segond , 2000 .

[26]  Donia Scott,et al.  Document Structure , 2003, CL.

[27]  Eugene Charniak,et al.  A Maximum-Entropy-Inspired Parser , 2000, ANLP.

[28]  Kevin Knight,et al.  Generation that Exploits Corpus-Based Statistical Knowledge , 1998, ACL.

[29]  Frederick Jelinek,et al.  Structured language modeling , 2000, Comput. Speech Lang..

[30]  Dan Flickinger,et al.  An Open Source Grammar Development Environment and Broad-coverage English Grammar Using HPSG , 2000, LREC.

[31]  Charles B. Callaway,et al.  Multilingual Revision , 2003, ENLG@EACL.

[32]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Lectures on Government and Binding , 1981 .

[33]  Kentaro Inui,et al.  Text Revision: A Model and Its Implementation , 1992, NLG.

[34]  Jason Eisner,et al.  Phonological Comprehension and the Compilation of Optimality Theory , 2002, ACL.

[35]  Paul Piwek,et al.  Natural Language Generation , 2004, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[36]  P. Smolensky.  On the comprehension/production dilemma in child language , 1996 .

[37]  A Prince,et al.  Optimality: From Neural Networks to Universal Grammar , 1997, Science.

[38]  Martha Palmer,et al.  Adding predicate argument structure to the Penn TreeBank , 2002 .

[39]  Günter Neumann,et al.  Self-Monitoring with Reversible Grammars , 1992, COLING.

[40]  Stephan Oepen,et al.  Parse Disambiguation for a Rich HPSG Grammar , 2002 .

[41]  P. Boersma.  How we learn variation, optionality and probalility , 1997 .

[42]  Robert Dale,et al.  Computational Interpretations of the Gricean Maxims in the Generation of Referring Expressions , 1995, Cogn. Sci..

[43]  寺津 典子,et al.  書評・紹介 N. Chomsky著 Lectures on Government and Binding , 1983 .

[44]  Reinhard Blutner,et al.  Lexical Pragmatics , 1998, J. Semant..

[45]  David D. McDonald,et al.  A Model of Revision in Natural Language Generation , 1986, ACL.

[46]  Günter Neumann,et al.  A uniform computational model for natural language parsing and generation , 1994 .

[47]  Reinhard Blutner,et al.  Some Aspects of Optimality in Natural Language Interpretation , 2000, J. Semant..