An iterative algorithm for translation acquisition of adpositions.

This paper describes an algorithm which acquires prepositions for translation from large corpora. Corpora of both the source language and the target language are used, but they can be independent of each other. Moreover, the algorithm does not require any type of manual tagging. Using an iterative algorithm, the system selects preferred prepositions between specific verbs and nouns in the target language, and simultaneously detects compound verbs which may be obstacles to the proper selection of prepositions. This algorithm is applied for the translation of the Japanese postposition ‘de’ into English.