A Universal Part-of-Speech Tagset

To facilitate future research in unsupervised induction of syntactic structure and to standardize best-practices, we propose a tagset that consists of twelve universal part-of-speech categories. In addition to the tagset, we develop a mapping from 25 different treebank tagsets to this universal set. As a result, when combined with the original treebank data, this universal tagset and mapping produce a dataset consisting of common parts-of-speech for 22 different languages. We highlight the use of this resource via two experiments, including one that reports competitive accuracies for unsupervised grammar induction without gold standard part-of-speech tags

The CoNLL 2007 shared task on dependency parsing

The Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning features a shared task, in which participants train and test their learning systems on the same data sets. In 2007, as in 2006, the shared task has been devoted to dependency parsing, this year with both a multilingual track and a domain adaptation track. In this paper, we define the tasks of the different tracks and describe how the data sets were created from existing treebanks for ten languages. In addition, we characterize the different approaches of the participating systems, report the test results, and provide a first analysis of these results

The Parallel Meaning Bank: Towards a Multilingual Corpus of Translations Annotated with Compositional Meaning Representations

The Parallel Meaning Bank is a corpus of translations annotated with shared, formal meaning representations comprising over 11 million words divided over four languages (English, German, Italian, and Dutch). Our approach is based on cross-lingual projection: automatically produced (and manually corrected) semantic annotations for English sentences are mapped onto their word-aligned translations, assuming that the translations are meaning-preserving. The semantic annotation consists of five main steps: (i) segmentation of the text in sentences and lexical items; (ii) syntactic parsing with Combinatory Categorial Grammar; (iii) universal semantic tagging; (iv) symbolization; and (v) compositional semantic analysis based on Discourse Representation Theory. These steps are performed using statistical models trained in a semi-supervised manner. The employed annotation models are all language-neutral. Our first results are promising.Comment: To appear at EACL 201

Assumptions behind grammatical approaches to code-switching: when the blueprint is a red herring

Many of the so-called ‘grammars’ of code-switching are based on various underlying assumptions, e.g. that informal speech can be adequately or appropriately described in terms of ‘‘grammar’’; that deep, rather than surface, structures are involved in code-switching; that one ‘language’ is the ‘base’ or ‘matrix’; and that constraints derived from existing data are universal and predictive. We question these assumptions on several grounds. First, ‘grammar’ is arguably distinct from the processes driving speech production. Second, the role of grammar is mediated by the variable, poly-idiolectal repertoires of bilingual speakers. Third, in many instances of CS the notion of a ‘base’ system is either irrelevant, or fails to explain the facts. Fourth, sociolinguistic factors frequently override ‘grammatical’ factors, as evidence from the same language pairs in different settings has shown. No principles proposed to date account for all the facts, and it seems unlikely that ‘grammar’, as conventionally conceived, can provide definitive answers. We conclude that rather than seeking universal, predictive grammatical rules, research on CS should focus on the variability of bilingual grammars

The educational system of the University of Malta : Italian influence and pedagogic projects

The study of the origins and development of Universities is important because it shows how these Medieval institutions to a large extent shaped and organized a new culture. The history and traditions of universities, their very creation, but, most of all their development from an organizational and teaching perspective are the starting point, in this specific research field, to determine the educational context and the cultural function performed by universities during the eighteenth century. The innumerable essays and studies relating to the structure and the cultural function of European universities are rich and fruitful, whereas their pedagogic and educational issues seem to be neglected. This research will focus on this particular sphere. Education becomes an element of "individual and collective growth", as it is connected with the currents of thought responsible for its development 1 . We shall focus mainly on the development and supplementing of national and foreign educational projects which contributed to the cultural evolution of the Maltese society by performing an essential task in preventing the interruption of historical continuity. Accordingly, attention will focus on the origin of the Maltese university system, clearly derived from its religious background and modelled on Italian educational patterns. Thus it is better to make clear that in these remarks on education and its related activities, it is important to consider the political and social context of the European universities at the end of 1700.peer-reviewe