Incremental natural-language processing with schema-tree adjoining grammars

Schema-Tree Adjoining Grammars are proposed for compressing natural-language grammars. Their rules allow for regular expressions associated with inner nodes of elementary trees referring to individual sons of inner nodes in order to describe their occurrences and repetitions in the set of elementary trees specified. In the following, the adequacy of representing a possibly infinite set of trees by one scheme is discussed for incremental natural-language processing where the input is consumed and processed piecemeal. The basic idea is to avoid decisions for which not enough information is available at the moment by the condensed representation of all currently valid alternatives in terms of semi-instantiated schemata. We present an extended Early processing which allows for mixing partially instantiated trees and uninstantiated schemata

Clausal Coordinate Ellipsis in German: The TIGER Treebank as a Source of Evidence

Proceedings of the 16th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA-2007. Editors: Joakim Nivre, Heiki-Jaan Kaalep, Kadri Muischnek and Mare Koit. University of Tartu, Tartu, 2007. ISBN 978-9985-4-0513-0 (online) ISBN 978-9985-4-0514-7 (CD-ROM) pp. 81-88

Structural translation with synchronous tree adjoining grammars in VERBMOBIL

The VERBMOBIL project is developing a translation system that can assist a face-to-face dialogue between two non-native english speakers. Instead of having continiously speak english, the dialogue partners have the option to switch to their respective mother tongues (currently german or japanese) in cases where they can\u27t find the required word, phrase or sentence. In such situations, the users activate VERBMOBIL to translate their utterances into english. A very important requirement for such a system is realtime processing. Realtime processing is essentially necessary, if such a system is to be smoothly integrated into an ongoing communication. This can be achieved by the use of anytime processing, which always provides a result. The quality of the result however, depends on the computation time given to the system. Early interruptions can only produce shallow results. Aiming at such a processing mode, methods for fast but preliminary translation must be integrated into the system assisted by others that refine these results. In this case we suggest structural translation with Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammars (S-TAGs), which can serve as a fast and shallow realisation of all steps necessary during translation, i.e. analysis, transfer and generation, in a system capable of running anytime methods. This mode is especially adequate for standardized speech acts and simple sentences. Furthermore, it provides a result for early interruptions of the translation process. By building an explicit linguistic structure, methods for refining the result can rearrange the structure in order to increase the quality of the translation given extended execution time. This paper describes the formalism of S-TAGs and the parsing algorithm implemented in VERBMOBIL. Furthermore the language covered by the german grammar is described. Finally we list examples together with the execution time required for their processing

Incremental syntax generation with tree adjoining grammars

With the increasing capacity of AI systems the design of human--computer interfaces has become a favorite research topic in AI. In this paper we focus on aspects of the output of a computer. The architecture of a sentence generation component -- embedded in the WIP system -- is described. The main emphasis is laid on the motivation for the incremental style of processing and the encoding of adequate linguistic units as rules of a Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar with Unification

Tree adjoining grammars mit Unifikation

Tree Adjoining Grammars (TAGs) - as used in the parsing algorithm of Harbusch - can be improved with respect to compactness and transparency for the task of grammar design. We have combined the two formalisms Tree Adjoining Grammar and Unification in order to benefit from their respective advantages. Our approach is contrasted with the approach of Vijay-Shanker

05382 Abstracts Collection -- Efficient Text Entry

From 21.09.05 to 24.09.05, the Dagstuhl Seminar 05382 ``Efficient Text Entry\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Supramodal sentence processing in the human brain: fMRI evidence for the influence of syntactic complexity in more than 200 participants

This study investigated two questions. One is: To what degree is sentence processing beyond single words independent of the input modality (speech vs. reading)? The second question is: Which parts of the network recruited by both modalities is sensitive to syntactic complexity? These questions were investigated by having more than 200 participants read or listen to well-formed sentences or series of unconnected words. A largely left-hemisphere frontotemporoparietal network was found to be supramodal in nature, i.e., independent of input modality. In addition, the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG) were most clearly associated with left-branching complexity. The left anterior temporal lobe (LaTL) showed the greatest sensitivity to sentences that differed in right-branching complexity. Moreover, activity in LIFG and LpMTG increased from sentence onset to end, in parallel with an increase of the left-branching complexity. While LIFG, bilateral anterior temporal lobe, posterior MTG, and left inferior parietal lobe (LIPL) all contribute to the supramodal unification processes, the results suggest that these regions differ in their respective contributions to syntactic complexity related processing. The consequences of these findings for neurobiological models of language processing are discussed

Supramodal Sentence Processing in the Human Brain: fMRI Evidence for the Influence of Syntactic Complexity in More Than 200 Participants

This study investigated two questions. One is: To what degree is sentence processing beyond single words independent of the input modality (speech vs. reading)? The second question is: Which parts of the network recruited by both modalities is sensitive to syntactic complexity? These questions were investigated by having more than 200 participants read or listen to well-formed sentences or series of unconnected words. A largely left-hemisphere frontotemporoparietal network was found to be supramodal in nature, i.e., independent of input modality. In addition, the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG) were most clearly associated with left-branching complexity. The left anterior temporal lobe showed the greatest sensitivity to sentences that differed in right-branching complexity. Moreover, activity in LIFG and LpMTG increased from sentence onset to end, in parallel with an increase of the left-branching complexity. While LIFG, bilateral anterior temporal lobe, posterior MTG, and left inferior parietal lobe all contribute to the supramodal unification processes, the results suggest that these regions differ in their respective contributions to syntactic complexity related processing. The consequences of these findings for neurobiological models of language processing are discussed