Representation and parsing of multiword expressions

This book consists of contributions related to the definition, representation and parsing of MWEs. These reflect current trends in the representation and processing of MWEs. They cover various categories of MWEs such as verbal, adverbial and nominal MWEs, various linguistic frameworks (e.g. tree-based and unification-based grammars), various languages including English, French, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian), and various applications (namely MWE detection, parsing, automatic translation) using both symbolic and statistical approaches

Current trends

Deep parsing is the fundamental process aiming at the representation of the syntactic structure of phrases and sentences. In the traditional methodology this process is based on lexicons and grammars representing roughly properties of words and interactions of words and structures in sentences. Several linguistic frameworks, such as Headdriven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG), Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG), etc., offer different structures and combining operations for building grammar rules. These already contain mechanisms for expressing properties of Multiword Expressions (MWE), which, however, need improvement in how they account for idiosyncrasies of MWEs on the one hand and their similarities to regular structures on the other hand. This collaborative book constitutes a survey on various attempts at representing and parsing MWEs in the context of linguistic theories and applications

Multiword expressions at length and in depth

The annual workshop on multiword expressions takes place since 2001 in conjunction with major computational linguistics conferences and attracts the attention of an ever-growing community working on a variety of languages, linguistic phenomena and related computational processing issues. MWE 2017 took place in Valencia, Spain, and represented a vibrant panorama of the current research landscape on the computational treatment of multiword expressions, featuring many high-quality submissions. Furthermore, MWE 2017 included the first shared task on multilingual identification of verbal multiword expressions. The shared task, with extended communal work, has developed important multilingual resources and mobilised several research groups in computational linguistics worldwide. This book contains extended versions of selected papers from the workshop. Authors worked hard to include detailed explanations, broader and deeper analyses, and new exciting results, which were thoroughly reviewed by an internationally renowned committee. We hope that this distinctly joint effort will provide a meaningful and useful snapshot of the multilingual state of the art in multiword expressions modelling and processing, and will be a point point of reference for future work

Automatic extraction of Arabic multiword expressions

In this paper we investigate the automatic acquisition of Arabic Multiword Expressions (MWE). We propose three complementary approaches to extract MWEs from available data resources. The first approach relies on the correspondence asymmetries between Arabic Wikipedia titles and titles in 21 different languages. The second approach collects English MWEs from Princeton WordNet 3.0, translates the collection into Arabic using Google Translate, and utilizes different search engines to validate the output. The third uses lexical association measures to extract MWEs from a large unannotated corpus. We experimentally explore the feasibility of each approach and measure the quality and coverage of the output against gold standards

Multiword expression processing: A survey

Multiword expressions (MWEs) are a class of linguistic forms spanning conventional word boundaries that are both idiosyncratic and pervasive across different languages. The structure of linguistic processing that depends on the clear distinction between words and phrases has to be re-thought to accommodate MWEs. The issue of MWE handling is crucial for NLP applications, where it raises a number of challenges. The emergence of solutions in the absence of guiding principles motivates this survey, whose aim is not only to provide a focused review of MWE processing, but also to clarify the nature of interactions between MWE processing and downstream applications. We propose a conceptual framework within which challenges and research contributions can be positioned. It offers a shared understanding of what is meant by "MWE processing," distinguishing the subtasks of MWE discovery and identification. It also elucidates the interactions between MWE processing and two use cases: Parsing and machine translation. Many of the approaches in the literature can be differentiated according to how MWE processing is timed with respect to underlying use cases. We discuss how such orchestration choices affect the scope of MWE-aware systems. For each of the two MWE processing subtasks and for each of the two use cases, we conclude on open issues and research perspectives

Důležitá slova. Podklady ke kolokačnímu švédsko-českému slovníku základních sloves

Basic verbs, i.e. very common verbs that typically denote physical movements, locations, states or actions, undergo various semantic shifts and acquire different secondary uses. In extreme cases, the distribution of secondary uses grows so general that they are regarded as auxiliary verbs (go and to be going to), phase verbs (turn, grow), etc. ese uses are usually well-documented by grammars and language textbooks, and so are idiomatic expressions (phraseologisms) in dictionaries. ere is, however, a grey area in between, which is extremely difficult to learn for non-native speakers. is consists of secondary uses with limited collocability, in particular light verb constructions, and secondary meanings that only get activated under particular morphosyntactic conditions. e basic-verb secondary uses and constructions are usually semantically transparent, such that they do not pose understanding problems, but they are generally unpredictable and language-specific, such that they easily become an issue in non-native text production. In this thesis, Swedish basic verbs are approached from the contrastive point of view of an advanced Czech learner of Swedish. A selection of Swedish constructions with basic verbs is explored. e observations result in a proposal for the structure of a machine-readable Swedish-Czech...Základní slovesa (basic verbs), tj. frekventovaná významová slovesa, jež zpravidla popisují fyzický pohyb, umístění, stav, nebo děj, procházejí řadou sémantických posunů, díky kterým se používají k vyjádření druhotných, přenesených významů. V krajních případech se dané sloveso stává pomocným, způsobovým, nebo fázovým slovesem a přestávají pro ně platit kolokační omezení, jež se vztahují na sloveso užité v jeho primárním (tj. doslovném) významu. Tato užití sloves bývají většinou dobře dokumentována v gramatikách i učebnicích, stejně jako kvalitní slovníky podávají podrobnou informaci o užití těchto sloves v ustálených frazeologických spojeních. Mezi plně gramatikalizovaným užitím na jedné straně a idiomatickým, frazeologickým užitím na druhé straně však existuje celá škála užití základních sloves v přenesených významech, jejíž zvládnutí je pro nerodilého mluvčího značně obtížné: užití v přeneseném významu, jež mají omezenou kolokabilitu. To jsou především verbonominální konstrukce někdy nazývané analytické predikáty (light verb constructions), ale také užití, která za určitých omezených morfosyntaktických podmínek (např. pouze v negaci) aktivují abstraktní sémantické rysy u jiných predikátů, např. zesilují význam, nebo implikují, že daný děj již trvá dlouho, a podobně. Tato druhotná užití významových sloves...Institute of Germanic StudiesÚstav germánských studiíFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Workshop Proceedings of the 12th edition of the KONVENS conference

The 2014 issue of KONVENS is even more a forum for exchange: its main topic is the interaction between Computational Linguistics and Information Science, and the synergies such interaction, cooperation and integrated views can produce. This topic at the crossroads of different research traditions which deal with natural language as a container of knowledge, and with methods to extract and manage knowledge that is linguistically represented is close to the heart of many researchers at the Institut für Informationswissenschaft und Sprachtechnologie of Universität Hildesheim: it has long been one of the institute’s research topics, and it has received even more attention over the last few years