From the UNL hypergraph to GETA's multilevel tree Etienne BLANC GETA, CLIPS-IMAG BP 53, F Grenoble cedex 09

- UNL: Universal Networking Language - Pivot language used in the UNL programme. - Aim of the UNL programme : to make the interlingual communication over the Net easier by using this interlingua. - a programme coordinated and supported by the United Nations University (Pr Uchida, Pr Della Senta, Tokyo). Soon a UNL fundation in Geneva. - Several « Language Centers » involved, among which the - GETA: Groupe dEtude pour la Traduction Automatique in charge of the French part of the programme. - hypergraph, multilevel tree : ways of coding a text meaning in UNL and in GETAs methodology. From the UNL hypergraph to GETA's multilevel tree

I. Overview of the UNL programme II. The UNL to French deconverter III. From the UNL hypergraph to GETAs multilevel tree IV. Conclusion

Universal Networking Language Portuguese Arabic Chinese French Indonesian German Hindi Italian Japanese Latvian Mongolian Russian Spanish Thai English I. OVERVIEW OF THE UNL PROGRAMME THE PROGRAMME IS BASED ON THE PIVOT PARADIGM AND TACKLES 16 LANGUAGES Korean

I. OVERVIEW OF THE UNL PROJECT A DOCUMENT IS DISPATCHED IN THE UNL FORMAT OVER THE NET Source document (Chinese) Enconverted document (UNL) Deconverted document (Mongolian) Deconverted document (Latvian) Deconverted document (Japanese) Deconverted document (French) Enconversion Deconversions

[S:4] {org:cn} {/org} {unl} )) {/unl} {ab}{/ab} {cn}{/cn}... {fr}{/fr}...{sh}{/sh} {th}{/th} [/S] ENCONVERSION DECONVERSIONS I. OVERVIEW OF THE UNL PROJECT: A SENTENCE IN A UNL FILE

I. OVERVIEW OF THE UNL PROJECT UNIVERSAL WORDS AND BINARY RELATIONS agt : binary relation « defining a thing which initiates an action. » Closed list. catch(icl>do): « Universal Word » made up of the English « headword » catch and the disambiguating « constraint » (icl>do) « attributes » providing information about how the concept is used in a particular sentence « The cat catches »

grey (icl>color) I. OVERVIEW OF THE UNL PROJECT A SIMPLE GRAPH agt plc obj mo d « The cat catches a grey mouse in the attic »

II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER : THE ARIANE-G5 MT ENVIRONMENT GENERATIONGENERATION T R A N S F E R ANALYSISANALYSIS

attraper:CAT(V)... ULTXT ULFRA PHVB : TPS(PRES)... II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER : SIMPLIFIED DEEP LEVEL ARIANE TREE (output of transfer step) GN: RL(ARG0)... chat:CAT(N),GNR(MAS)... GA : RS(QUAL)... GN: RL(ARG1)... sourisgris GN: RS(LOC)... RS:SEMANTIC RELATION RL:LOGICAL RELATION grenier « The cat catches a grey mouse in the attic »

II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER OVERALL STRUCTURE UNL graphARIANE tree T R A N S F E R French text GENERATIONGENERATION

II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER SOME FIGURES Universal Words - French dictionary : UW Transfer grammar : 1200 lines Generation grammar : 2600 lines

[D:dn=,on=UNL [P] [S:1] {org:el} UNU and UNU/IAS {/org} {unl} {/unl} {ab}{/ab}{cn}{/cn}{de}{/de}{el}{/el}{es}{/es}{fr}{/fr}{id}{/id}{hd}{/hd}{it}{/it}{ jo}{/jo}{jp}{/jp}{lv}{/lv}{mg}{/mg}{pg}{/pg}{ru}{/ru}{sh}{/sh}{th}{/th} [/S] [S:2] {org:el} United Nations University is an international academic organization of the Unites Nations, and reports to General Assembly of the UN and to the General Conference of UNESCO. {/org} {unl} aoj(organization(iclabstract nations university(iclorganization)) mod(organization(iclabstract mod(organization(iclabstract mod(organization(iclabstract nations(iclorganization)) and:01(general conference of assembly of the un(iclmeeting)) {/unl} {ab}{/ab}{cn}{/cn}{de}{/de}{el}{/el}{es}{/es}{fr}{/fr}{id}{/id}{hd}{/hd}{it}{/it}{ jo}{/jo}{jp}{/jp}{lv}{/lv}{mg}{/mg}{pg}{/pg}{ru}{/ru}{sh}{/sh}{th}{/th} [/S] [S:3] {org:el} It's mission is to address pressing global problems that are of the concern of the United Nations and its member states. {/org} {unl} thing)) mod(mission(iclabstract thing),it) …. II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER FROM A UNL DOCUMENT...

L'Université des Nations Unies est une organisation internationale académique des Nations Unies et rend compte à l'assemblée générale des Nations Unies et à la conférence générale de l'UNESCO. Sa mission est que des problèmes globaux urgents qui sont les responsabilités des Nations Unies et de ses états membres soient abordés. L'UNU apporte ensemble pour remplir sa mission la contribution d'universitaires de pays développés et en voie de développement et d'institutions. Il fonctionne par un réseau de centres de recherche et de formation ( ) ou de programmes de recherche et de formation ( ). La structure de l'UNU comprend (un tableau est vu) des corps constituants suivants. Le conseil d'université fixe des principes et des politiques pour l'université. Le président présent est Jairam_Reddy. Le recteur académique et administratif général de l'université est le responsable avec la responsabilité de la direction de son programme global et d'une organisation et d'une administration. II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER … TO THE FRENCH DECONVERTED DOCUMENT

II. THE FRENCH DECONVERTER EVALUATION OF THE RESULT: CONSEQUENCE OF AN UNDERSPECIFIED GRAPH Obtained French deconversion result: La mission de lUNU est que des problèmes soient abordés... (UNUs mission is that problems should be adressed...) Wished French deconversion result: La mission de lUNU est daborder des problèmes... (UNUs mission is to adress problems...) The UNL input graph was underspecified: the agent relation between to adress and UNU, implicit in English or French should be explicited in the graph, which was not the case.

III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE A UNL GRAPH COMPRISING A COMPOUND UW « He knows that you will not come and regrets it. » heknow you come agt andobj agt:01 regret(icl>do) agt(regret(equ>be obj(regret(equ>be and(regret(equ>be agt(know(agt>human,icl>#event),he(icl>human)) obj(know(agt>human,icl>#event),S01)

heknow you come agt andobj agt:01 regret(icl>do) he#1 know you come agt andobj agt regret(icl>do) he#1S01 III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE GRAPH TO TREE STRUCTURAL TRANSFER UNL graphtree S01 grp « He knows that you will not come and regrets it. »

he#1 know you come agt andobj agt regret(icl>do) he#1S01 grp il#1 savoir tu venir agt andobj agt regretter il#1S01 grp III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE LEXICAL TRANSFER Universal Word French lemma (or subtree)

savoir il#1 NP :RL(ARG0)... PHSUB#2 :RL(ARG1)... venir NP : RL(ARG0)... tu PHVB : RS(COORD)... regretter il#1 PHVB : TPS(PRES)... PHSUB#2: RL(ARG1)... NP :RL(ARG0)... III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE FINAL RESULT OF THE TRANSFER SEMANTIC TRANSFER + FINAL STRUCTURAL TRANSFER

agt a thing which initiates an action and a conjunctive relation between concepts aoj a thing which is in a state or has an attribute bas a thing used as the basis for expressing degree ben a not directly related beneficiary or victim of an event or state... EMIT agent of a process or experiencer ID the same relation as the father node - ANALOG reference for comparison RECEPT receiver or beneficiary... III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE THE SEMANTIC TRANSFER The first five UNL semantic relations Their equivalents in the French generator used

UNL 41 semantic relations GETA 26 semantic relations 3 argumentary relations (predicates) III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE SEMANTIC TRANSFER

THE DIFFICULTY OF THE DETERMINATION OF THE EXACT SEMANTIC RELATIONS BETWEEN A PREDICATE AND ITS DEPENDENTS... src defines the initial state of object or the thing initially associated with object of an event pof defines a concept of which a focused thing is a part. … COULD BE AVOIDED BY THE USE OF ARGUMENTARY RELATIONS, NOT (YET ?) USED IN UNL The IAS Faculty is constituted by researchers and professors obj src and:01 and:01 III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE LACK OF ARGUMENTARY RELATIONS

III. FROM THE UNL GRAPH TO GETAS TREE USEFULNESS OF ARGUMENTARY RELATIONS Using the argumentary relations of the predicates is helpful: - In the enconversion process (Natural language into UNL) : avoids the necessity of the (difficult) determination of the exact semantic relation between a predicate and its dependents -In the deconversion process (UNL into Natural Language) : allows a more direct NL generation by distinguishing between a circunstancial phrase and a predicate argument (The tower reaches until the heaven.) (The tower reaches the heaven.)

IV. CONCLUSION The UNL programm is a challenging project devising and using an Interlingua between all the languages of the world, despite linguistic and cultural differences. Hence a difficult project, mainly: 1 - difficulty of devising and using a complete set of semantic relations universally accepted. 2 - difficulty of devising and using a huge set of Universal Words. We essentially discussed here point 1. We are convinced that, as complete a set of semantic relations may be, the use of argumentary relations associated to the predicates remains unavoidable in the devising of such an Interlingua, independantly of the processing methodology used. But this implies a general agreement on the choice of the arguments for all predicates, which is not so easy...

Do you understand UNL? mod(conference(icl>meeting),fruitful) Or better: NB: aoj is the attribute semantic relation.

V. THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

V. THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT : THE « PARAX » MULTILINGUAL DATABASE

V. THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT : MULTILINGUAL DATABASE A PAGE OF THE FRENCH DICTIONARY (THE WORD « FONCTION ») fonction function(fld>mathematics) sens: 4 CAT(CATN),GNR(FEM),N(NC) French word: UW: sense number: gramm. descr.: UWFRRUJP Access to the equivalents of the UW In other languages

V. THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT : INTERACTIVE LEXICAL DISAMBIGUATION UNL graph French dependency tree lexical & structural transfer (1st step) disambiguation window