Learning Tree Distributions by Hidden Markov Models

Hidden tree Markov models allow learning distributions for tree structured data while being interpretable as nondeterministic automata. We provide a concise summary of the main approaches in literature, focusing in particular on the causality assumptions introduced by the choice of a specific tree visit direction. We will then sketch a novel non-parametric generalization of the bottom-up hidden tree Markov model with its interpretation as a nondeterministic tree automaton with infinite states.Comment: Accepted in LearnAut2018 worksho

Tree Echo State Networks

In this paper we present the Tree Echo State Network (TreeESN) model, generalizing the paradigm of Reservoir Computing to tree structured data. TreeESNs exploit an untrained generalized recursive reservoir, exhibiting extreme efficiency for learning in structured domains. In addition, we highlight through the paper other characteristics of the approach: First, we discuss the Markovian characterization of reservoir dynamics, extended to the case of tree domains, that is implied by the contractive setting of the TreeESN state transition function. Second, we study two types of state mapping functions to map the tree structured state of TreeESN into a fixed-size feature representation for classification or regression tasks. The critical role of the relation between the choice of the state mapping function and the Markovian characterization of the task is analyzed and experimentally investigated on both artificial and real-world tasks. Finally, experimental results on benchmark and real-world tasks show that the TreeESN approach, in spite of its efficiency, can achieve comparable results with state-of-the-art, although more complex, neural and kernel based models for tree structured data

Strong Generative Capacity of Morphological Processes

Morphological processes are generally computable with 1-way finite-state transducers. However, we show that 1-way transducers do not capture the strong generative capacity of certain morphological analyses for more complex processes, including mobile affixation, infixation, and partial reduplication. As diagnostics for strong generative capacity, we use origin semantics and order-preservation. These analyze the input-output correspondences generated by finite-state transducers and their corresponding logical transductions. For some linguistic analyses of these complex processes, their strong generative capacity is matched by more expressive grammars, such as non-order-preserving transductions and their corresponding 2-way finite-state transducers

A Fuzzy Approach to Erroneous Inputs in Context-Free Language Recognition

Using fuzzy context-free grammars one can easily describe a finite number of ways to derive incorrect strings together with their degree of correctness. However, in general there is an infinite number of ways to perform a certain task wrongly. In this paper we introduce a generalization of fuzzy context-free grammars, the so-called fuzzy context-free $K$-grammars, to model the situation of making a finite choice out of an infinity of possible grammatical errors during each context-free derivation step. Under minor assumptions on the parameter $K$ this model happens to be a very general framework to describe correctly as well as erroneously derived sentences by a single generating mechanism. Our first result characterizes the generating capacity of these fuzzy context-free $K$-grammars. As consequences we obtain: (i) bounds on modeling grammatical errors within the framework of fuzzy context-free grammars, and (ii) the fact that the family of languages generated by fuzzy context-free $K$-grammars shares closure properties very similar to those of the family of ordinary context-free languages. The second part of the paper is devoted to a few algorithms to recognize fuzzy context-free languages: viz. a variant of a functional version of Cocke-Younger- Kasami's algorithm and some recursive descent algorithms. These algorithms turn out to be robust in some very elementary sense and they can easily be extended to corresponding parsing algorithms

Parsing of Spoken Language under Time Constraints

Spoken language applications in natural dialogue settings place serious requirements on the choice of processing architecture. Especially under adverse phonetic and acoustic conditions parsing procedures have to be developed which do not only analyse the incoming speech in a time-synchroneous and incremental manner, but which are able to schedule their resources according to the varying conditions of the recognition process. Depending on the actual degree of local ambiguity the parser has to select among the available constraints in order to narrow down the search space with as little effort as possible. A parsing approach based on constraint satisfaction techniques is discussed. It provides important characteristics of the desired real-time behaviour and attempts to mimic some of the attention focussing capabilities of the human speech comprehension mechanism.Comment: 19 pages, LaTe

Multiple Context-Free Tree Grammars: Lexicalization and Characterization

Multiple (simple) context-free tree grammars are investigated, where "simple" means "linear and nondeleting". Every multiple context-free tree grammar that is finitely ambiguous can be lexicalized; i.e., it can be transformed into an equivalent one (generating the same tree language) in which each rule of the grammar contains a lexical symbol. Due to this transformation, the rank of the nonterminals increases at most by 1, and the multiplicity (or fan-out) of the grammar increases at most by the maximal rank of the lexical symbols; in particular, the multiplicity does not increase when all lexical symbols have rank 0. Multiple context-free tree grammars have the same tree generating power as multi-component tree adjoining grammars (provided the latter can use a root-marker). Moreover, every multi-component tree adjoining grammar that is finitely ambiguous can be lexicalized. Multiple context-free tree grammars have the same string generating power as multiple context-free (string) grammars and polynomial time parsing algorithms. A tree language can be generated by a multiple context-free tree grammar if and only if it is the image of a regular tree language under a deterministic finite-copying macro tree transducer. Multiple context-free tree grammars can be used as a synchronous translation device.Comment: 78 pages, 13 figure