A Compositional Approach to the Translation of Temporal Expressions in the Rosetta System
What it is about
The paper asks how temporal expressions should be translated inside the Rosetta isomorphic-grammar system between Dutch, English and Spanish. Tense is not a simple mapping: a Dutch simple present with a duration adverbial corresponds to an English perfect progressive, while the literal translation of the same tense is ill-formed. The author builds a small theory of time, with time points ordered by the earlier-than relation, a moment of speech, events located as intervals, and reference intervals that relate an event to the time model. Isomorphic M-grammar rules then attach the time meaning to the same derivation steps in each language. The paper shows worked examples; it reports no counts or accuracy figures.
Ideas
- I1. Store the time relation as a feature of the verb meta token: the tense and aspect from UD FEATS, plus the adverbial that sets a duration. Then the same meta token can be written as a perfect progressive or a simple present, and the choice is a counted rule, not a word.
- I2. Count the tense mismatches in the verse pairs: for each source tense plus adverbial, how often the target tense differs. Keep the table keyed by enums and in BTreeMap order; a rule enters the delta only when it fixes at least three more tokens.
- I3. Negative control: swap the tense feature on a test set and check that the exact-mode residual in the encoding step rises. A rule that cannot show red does not count.
For Mova
The code is tools/translate (profile.rs for the encoder, meta.rs for the concepts) and the frames in prag. The paper's time model is not needed as such, but its split between the tense of a sentence and the time reference it sets is a good test case for open problems 4 and 5 (function features and number/person from FEATS on meta tokens).
Cite
@inproceedings{appelo1986compositional,
title = {{A Compositional Approach to the Translation of Temporal Expressions in the Rosetta System}},
author = {Appelo, Lisette},
booktitle = {Coling 1986 Volume 1: The 11th International Conference on Computational Linguistics},
year = {1986},
doi = {10.3115/991365.991457},
url = {https://doi.org/10.3115/991365.991457}
}References
- Bruce, B., (1972): "A model for temporal references and its application in a question answering program'. In: Artificial Intelligence 3, ] -25. find
- Comrie, B., (1976): Aspect: an Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Rela--~d P r o b l e m s . a m - nlvers ty r e s s , - r - g . certain Dowty, D.R., (1979): Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Reidel Vol. 7q--. . find
- Krauwer, S. and L. des Tombe, (1985): "Compositionality'. In: Dehaan, G. and W. Zonneveld (eds.): Formal Parameters of Generative Grammar. find
- I. Yearbook Landsbergen, J., (1982): "Machine Translation based on Logically Isomorphic Montague Grammars'. In: J. Horecky (ed.), COLING 82 North Holland, p. 175-182. find
- Landsbergen, J., (1984): "Isomorphic Grammars and their use in the Rosetta Translation system'. Paper presented at the Tutorial on Machine Translation, Lugano. Philips Research M.S. 12.950, to appear in: King, M. (ed.), Machine Translation: The State of the Art, Edinburgh Un-ivTr-s~[Ty Press. find
- Maegaard, B., (1982): "The Transfer of Finite Forms in a Machine Translation System'. In: Abstracts COLING 82, p. 190-194. find
- Oversteegen, L. and H.J. Verkuyl, (1985): temporele zinsstructuur van bet Nederlands: tijdsbanden'. In GLOT. De twee Reichenbach, H., (1947): Elements University of California Press, of Symbolic Logic. find
- Van Eynde, F., L. des Tombe and F. Maes (1985): "Specification of time meaning for machine translation'. Proceedings ACL conference, Geneva. find
- Verkuyl, H.J., (1972): On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects. Dordrecht. find
- Vuyst, J. de, (1983): "A Semantic Analysis of Temporal Elements in Dutch and English'. Diss. RUG, Groningen. of the find
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/appelo-1986-compositional-approach-translation-temporal-expressions/