Frame semantics for the field of climate change : d iscovering frames based on chinese and english terms

La plupart des dictionnaires spécialisés de termes environnementaux en mandarin sont des dictionnaires papier, compilés et révisés il y a plus de dix ans, et contiennent principalement des termes nominaux. Les informations terminologiques se limitent aux connaissances véhiculées par le terme et son ou ses équivalents anglais. Pour les lecteurs qui souhaitent connaître les propriétés sémantiques ou syntaxiques des termes et pour les lecteurs qui veulent voir l’usage des termes dans des contextes réels de textes spécialisés, les informations fournies par les dictionnaires existants sont insuffisantes. Dans cette recherche, nous avons compilé une ressource terminologique en ligne du mandarin, décrivant les termes verbaux chinois dans le domaine du changement climatique. Cette ressource comble certaines des lacunes des dictionnaires environnementaux mandarin existants, en révélant le(s) sens du terme à travers la(les) structure(s) actantielle(s) et en montrant, à travers des contextes annotés, les propriétés sémantiques et syntaxiques du terme ainsi que ses usages pratiques dans des textes spécialisés. Cette ressource répondra mieux aux besoins du public. La base théorique qui sous-tend cette recherche est la Sémantique des cadres (Fillmore, 1976, 1977, 1982, 1985; Fillmore & Atkins, 1992), et le FrameNet construit à partir de celle-ci. L’objectif principal de cette recherche est de découvrir et de définir des cadres sémantiques chinois dans le domaine du changement climatique, et d’établir des relations entre les cadres chinois définis. Les cadres sémantiques chinois sont découverts à l’aide de la méthodologie du dictionnaire environnemental multilingue DiCoEnviro (et de sa ressource d’accompagnement Framed DiCoEnviro) (L’Homme, 2018; L’Homme et al., 2020). Afin de rendre cette méthodologie applicable à une langue sino-tibétaine, le chinois, nous avons modifié et adapté cette méthodologie pour qu’elle convienne à la description des termes chinois et à la définition des cadres sémantiques chinois. Certaines de ces modifications et adaptations sont basées sur le Chinese FrameNet (CFN) (Liu & You, 2015). Afin de découvrir les cadres sémantiques chinois, un corpus monolingue en chinois mandarin sur le changement climatique (MCCC) a d’abord été compilé. Ce corpus contient 224 textes iv authentiques chinois spécialisés dans le domaine du changement climatique, qui totalisent 1,228,333 caractères chinois, soit 547,592 mots chinois. Puis, les termes candidats ont été automatiquement extraits du MCCC à l’aide du logiciel de gestion et d’analyse de corpus – Sketch Engine. Après une analyse et une validation manuelle, nous avons déterminé quels termes candidats sont des termes réels. Par la suite, la structure actancielle de chaque terme a été écrite en analysant les contextes où le terme apparaît. Ensuite, chaque sens d’un terme polysémique a été placé dans une entrée séparée et 16-20 contextes ont été sélectionnés pour chaque entrée. Puis, chaque contexte a été annoté en fonction de trois couches – structure sémantique, fonction syntaxique et groupe syntaxique. Ensuite, les termes ont été classés en fonction des scénarios qu’ils évoquent. Les termes qui dépeignent la même scène ou situation dans le domaine du changement climatique, qui ont une structure actantielle similaire et qui partagent la majorité des circonstants sont classés dans un seul cadre sémantique (critères basés sur le projet DiCoEnviro (L’Homme, 2018; L’Homme et al., 2020)). Après avoir identifié les cadres sémantiques chinois, chaque cadre a été défini. Enfin, les cadres chinois découverts ont été reliés selon les huit types de relations entre cadres proposés par Ruppenhofer et al. (2016). Pour être affichés en ligne, les entrées de termes et les cadres sémantiques ont été encodés dans des fichiers XML. Guidés par cette méthodologie de recherche, nous avons finalement relevé 23 cadres sémantiques chinois et nous les avons définis. Le résultat final de cette recherche est une ressource terminologique en chinois mandarin basée sur des cadres et spécialisée dans le domaine du changement climatique. Cette ressource terminologique se compose de deux parties. La première partie est la description d’un total de 39 termes verbaux chinois. Chaque sens d’un terme verbal polysémique étant placé dans une entrée séparée, il y a au total 59 entrées (chaque entrée contient la structure actantielle et les contextes annotés). Au total, 1,027 contextes ont été annotés. La deuxième partie de cette ressource présente les 23 cadres sémantiques chinois identifiés ainsi que les relations entre les cadres.Most of the existing Mandarin Chinese specialised dictionaries of environmental terms are paper dictionaries, compiled and revised more than ten years ago, and contain mainly noun terms. Terminological information is restricted to knowledge conveyed by the term and its English equivalent(s). For readers who want to learn about semantic or syntactic properties of terms and for readers who want to see usage of terms in real contexts of specialised texts, information provided in existing dictionaries is insufficient. In this research, we compiled an online Mandarin Chinese terminological resource, describing Chinese verb terms in the field of climate change. This resource makes up for some of the deficiencies of existing Chinese environmental dictionaries, revealing meaning(s) of the term through actantial structure(s) and showing, through annotated contexts, semantic and syntactic properties of the term as well as its practical usages in specialised texts. This resource better meets the needs of the audience. The theoretical basis underpinning this research is Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1976, 1977, 1982, 1985; Fillmore & Atkins, 1992), and the FrameNet built from it. The main objective of this research is to discover and define Chinese semantic frames in the field of climate change, and to establish relations between the Chinese frames defined. The Chinese semantic frames are discovered with the help of the methodology of the multilingual environmental dictionary DiCoEnviro (and its accompanying resource Framed DiCoEnviro) (L’Homme, 2018; L’Homme et al., 2020). In order to make this methodology applicable to a Sino-Tibetan language, Chinese, we modified and adapted this methodology to suit the description of Chinese terms and definition of Chinese semantic frames. Some of the changes and adaptations are based on the Chinese FrameNet (CFN) (Liu & You, 2015). In order to discover Chinese semantic frames, a monolingual Mandarin (Chinese) Climate Change Corpus (MCCC) was first compiled. This corpus contains 224 authentic Chinese specialised texts in the field of climate change, totaling 1,228,333 Chinese characters, which is 547,592 Chinese words. Following this, candidate terms were automatically extracted from MCCC using the corpus ii management and analysing software – Sketch Engine. After manual analysis and validation, which of the candidate terms are true terms was clarified. Subsequently, the actantial structure of each term was written by analysing the contexts where the term occurs. Next, each sense of a polysemous term was placed in a separate entry and 16-20 contexts were selected for each entry. Then, each context was annotated in terms of three layers – semantic structure, syntactic function and syntactic group. After this, the terms were classified according to the scenarios they evoke. Terms that depict the same scene or situation in the field of climate change, have similar actantial structure, and share the majority of circumstants are categorised into one semantic frame (criteria based on the project DiCoEnviro (L’Homme, 2018; L’Homme et al., 2020)). After Chinese semantic frames were identified, each frame was defined. Finally, the discovered Chinese frames were linked according to the eight types of frame relations proposed by Ruppenhofer et al. (2016). To be displayed online, term entries and semantic frames were encoded in XML files. Guided by this research methodology, we eventually discovered and defined 23 Chinese semantic frames. The end result of this research is a frame-based Mandarin Chinese terminological resource specialised in the field of climate change. This terminological resource consists of two parts. The first part is the description of a total of 39 Chinese verb terms. With each meaning of a polysemous verb term placed in a separate entry, there are a total of 59 entries (each entry contains the actantial structure and annotated contexts). A total of 1,027 contexts were annotated. The second part of this resource presents the 23 Chinese semantic frames identified as well as the relations between frames

Lexical database enrichment through semi-automated morphological analysis

Derivational morphology proposes meaningful connections between words and is largely unrepresented in lexical databases. This thesis presents a project to enrich a lexical database with morphological links and to evaluate their contribution to disambiguation. A lexical database with sense distinctions was required. WordNet was chosen because of its free availability and widespread use. Its suitability was assessed through critical evaluation with respect to specifications and criticisms, using a transparent, extensible model. The identification of serious shortcomings suggested a portable enrichment methodology, applicable to alternative resources. Although 40% of the most frequent words are prepositions, they have been largely ignored by computational linguists, so addition of prepositions was also required. The preferred approach to morphological enrichment was to infer relations from phenomena discovered algorithmically. Both existing databases and existing algorithms can capture regular morphological relations, but cannot capture exceptions correctly; neither of them provide any semantic information. Some morphological analysis algorithms are subject to the fallacy that morphological analysis can be performed simply by segmentation. Morphological rules, grounded in observation and etymology, govern associations between and attachment of suffixes and contribute to defining the meaning of morphological relationships. Specifying character substitutions circumvents the segmentation fallacy. Morphological rules are prone to undergeneration, minimised through a variable lexical validity requirement, and overgeneration, minimised by rule reformulation and restricting monosyllabic output. Rules take into account the morphology of ancestor languages through co-occurrences of morphological patterns. Multiple rules applicable to an input suffix need their precedence established. The resistance of prefixations to segmentation has been addressed by identifying linking vowel exceptions and irregular prefixes. The automatic affix discovery algorithm applies heuristics to identify meaningful affixes and is combined with morphological rules into a hybrid model, fed only with empirical data, collected without supervision. Further algorithms apply the rules optimally to automatically pre-identified suffixes and break words into their component morphemes. To handle exceptions, stoplists were created in response to initial errors and fed back into the model through iterative development, leading to 100% precision, contestable only on lexicographic criteria. Stoplist length is minimised by special treatment of monosyllables and reformulation of rules. 96% of words and phrases are analysed. 218,802 directed derivational links have been encoded in the lexicon rather than the wordnet component of the model because the lexicon provides the optimal clustering of word senses. Both links and analyser are portable to an alternative lexicon. The evaluation uses the extended gloss overlaps disambiguation algorithm. The enriched model outperformed WordNet in terms of recall without loss of precision. Failure of all experiments to outperform disambiguation by frequency reflects on WordNet sense distinctions

Lexical database enrichment through semi-automated morphological analysis

Derivational morphology proposes meaningful connections between words and is largely unrepresented in lexical databases. This thesis presents a project to enrich a lexical database with morphological links and to evaluate their contribution to disambiguation. A lexical database with sense distinctions was required. WordNet was chosen because of its free availability and widespread use. Its suitability was assessed through critical evaluation with respect to specifications and criticisms, using a transparent, extensible model. The identification of serious shortcomings suggested a portable enrichment methodology, applicable to alternative resources. Although 40% of the most frequent words are prepositions, they have been largely ignored by computational linguists, so addition of prepositions was also required. The preferred approach to morphological enrichment was to infer relations from phenomena discovered algorithmically. Both existing databases and existing algorithms can capture regular morphological relations, but cannot capture exceptions correctly; neither of them provide any semantic information. Some morphological analysis algorithms are subject to the fallacy that morphological analysis can be performed simply by segmentation. Morphological rules, grounded in observation and etymology, govern associations between and attachment of suffixes and contribute to defining the meaning of morphological relationships. Specifying character substitutions circumvents the segmentation fallacy. Morphological rules are prone to undergeneration, minimised through a variable lexical validity requirement, and overgeneration, minimised by rule reformulation and restricting monosyllabic output. Rules take into account the morphology of ancestor languages through co-occurrences of morphological patterns. Multiple rules applicable to an input suffix need their precedence established. The resistance of prefixations to segmentation has been addressed by identifying linking vowel exceptions and irregular prefixes. The automatic affix discovery algorithm applies heuristics to identify meaningful affixes and is combined with morphological rules into a hybrid model, fed only with empirical data, collected without supervision. Further algorithms apply the rules optimally to automatically pre-identified suffixes and break words into their component morphemes. To handle exceptions, stoplists were created in response to initial errors and fed back into the model through iterative development, leading to 100% precision, contestable only on lexicographic criteria. Stoplist length is minimised by special treatment of monosyllables and reformulation of rules. 96% of words and phrases are analysed. 218,802 directed derivational links have been encoded in the lexicon rather than the wordnet component of the model because the lexicon provides the optimal clustering of word senses. Both links and analyser are portable to an alternative lexicon. The evaluation uses the extended gloss overlaps disambiguation algorithm. The enriched model outperformed WordNet in terms of recall without loss of precision. Failure of all experiments to outperform disambiguation by frequency reflects on WordNet sense distinctions.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Chinese elements : a bridge of the integration between Chinese -English translation and linguaculture transnational mobility

[Abstract] As the popularity of Chinese elements in the innovation of the translation part in Chinese CET, we realized that Chinese elements have become a bridge between linguaculture transnational mobility and Chinese-English translation.So, Chinese students translation skills should be critically improved; for example, on their understanding about Chinese culture, especially the meaning of Chinese culture. Five important secrets of skillful translation are introduced to improve students’ translation skills