Generation of text from logical formulae

The paper addresses the problem of generating sentences from logical formulae. It describes a simple and efficient algorithm for generating text which has been developed for use in machine translation, but will have wider application in natural language processing. An important property of the algorithm is that the logical form used to generate a sentence need not be one which could have been produced by parsing the sentence: formal equivalence between logical forms is allowed for. This is necessary for a machine translation system, such as the one envisaged in this paper, which uses single declarative grammars of individual languages, and declarative statements of translation equivalences for transfer. In such a system, it cannot be guaranteed that transfer will produce a logical form in the same order as would have been produced by parsing some target-language sentence, and it is not practicable to define a normal form for the logical forms. The algorithm is demonstrated using a categorial grammar and a simple indexed logic, as this allows a particularly clear and elegant formulation. It is shown that the algorithm can be adapted to phrase-structure grammars, and to more complex semantic representations than that used here.

[1]  J. Jorgensen.  The psychological reality of word senses , 1990 .

[2]  Jun'ichi Tsujii,et al.  Interaction between Structural Changes in Machine Translation , 1992, COLING.

[3]  Pete Whitelock,et al.  Shake-and-Bake Translation , 1992, COLING.

[4]  Claire Gardent,et al.  Generating from a Deep Structure , 1990, COLING.

[5]  Yoshihiro Ueda,et al.  Generation for Dialogue Translation Using Typed Feature Structure Unification , 1990, COLING.

[6]  Gertjan van Noord.  An overview of head-driven bottom-up generation , 1990 .

[7]  Sergei Nirenburg,et al.  Montague Grammar and Machine Translation , 2003 .

[8]  Ted Briscoe,et al.  The Syntactic Regularity of English Noun Phrases , 1989, EACL.

[9]  Henk Zeevat,et al.  An Algorithm for Generation in Unification Categorial Grammar , 1989, EACL.

[10]  Dominique Estival,et al.  A Syntax and Semantics for Feature-Structure Transfer , 2005 .

[11]  Stuart M. Shieber,et al.  A Uniform Architecture for Parsing and Generation , 1988, COLING.

[12]  J. D. Phillips,et al.  GPSGP — a parser for generalized phrase structure grammars , 1985 .

[13]  Marc Dymetman,et al.  Reversible logic grammars for machine translation , 1988, TMI.

[14]  David R. Dowty.  On the Semantic Content of the Notion of ‘Thematic Role’ , 1989 .

[15]  Hiyan Alshawi,et al.  Translation by Quasi Logical Form Transfer , 1991, ACL.

[16]  Klaus Netter,et al.  Translation by Structural Correspondences , 1989, EACL.

[17]  Geoffrey K. Pullum,et al.  Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar , 1985 .

[18]  Gertjan van Noord,et al.  Semantic-Head-Driven Generation , 1990, Comput. Linguistics.

[19]  Gertjan van Noord.  Reversible Unification Based Machine Translation , 1990, COLING.

[20]  Wessel Kraaij,et al.  Ambiguity resolution and the retrieval of idioms: two approaches , 1990, COLING.

[21]  Gertjan van Noord,et al.  A Semantic-Head-Driven Generation Algorithm for Unification-Based Formalisms , 1989, ACL.

[22]  Jürgen Wedekind.  Generation as structure driven derivation , 1988, COLING.

[23]  Sally Mcconnell-Ginet.  ADVERBS AND LOGICAL FORM: A LINGUISTICALLY REALISTIC THEORY , 1982 .

[24]  Paul Bennett,et al.  Linguistics for Machine Translation: The Eurotra Linguistic Specifications , 1991 .

[25]  Terence Parsons,et al.  Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic Semantics , 1990 .

[26]  Gertjan van Noord.  BUG: A Directed Bottom Up Generator for Unification Based Formalisms , 1989 .

[27]  Harold L. Somers,et al.  Linguistic Theory and Computer Applications , 1987 .