Semantic Aspects of Translation Gary G. Hendrix

Semantic Aspects of Translation2 Contents  Introduction  Phase I: Semantic Composition  Phase II: Quantification  The Use of Case Information

Semantic Aspects of Translation3 Introduction  The subject of this chapter  The utilization of semantic knowledge in the process of understanding spoken inputs as practiced in the SRI speech understanding

Semantic Aspects of Translation4 Introduction  Three functions in the understanding process  Filtering out phrase combinations  Building deep, internal structures  Making predictions  In this chapter, the major emphasis will be on the first two

Semantic Aspects of Translation5 Example “General.Dynamics built the American submarine”

Semantic Aspects of Translation6 PHASE I: Semantic Composition Acoustic stream Network fragment Semantic Composition Rule (SCR) Knowledge Space Result Add Property Lists

Semantic Aspects of Translation7 PHASE I: Semantic Composition “A power plant of a submarine was built by a company”

Semantic Aspects of Translation8 “A power plant of a submarine was built by a company”  Grammar R1: S => NP VP R2: NP => NP PREPP R3: VP=> VP PREPP R4: PREPP => PREP NP  Lexicon NP: a-power-plant, a-submarine, a-company VP: was-built PREP: of, by

Semantic Aspects of Translation9 PHASE I: Semantic Composition PHRASE INTERPRETATION NP1(‘P’. NP1) NP2(‘S’. NP2) NP3(‘C’. NP3) NP4(‘P’. NP4) PREP1pre net PREP2pre net PREPP1(‘C’. NP3) PREPP2(‘S’. NP2) S1(‘B’. S1) S2(‘B’. S2) VP1(‘B’. VP1) VP2(‘B’. VP2)

Semantic Aspects of Translation10 PHASE I: Semantic Composition  Interacting with Discourse “General.Dynamics built the American submarine” “General.Dynamics built the Henry.L.Stimson”  The actual task of relating “the American submarine” to the Henry.L.Stimson is performed by the discourse component  Described fully in Chapter XI

Semantic Aspects of Translation11  Grammar R1: S => NP VP R2: VP => VP NP R3: NP=> N R4: NP => ART MOD N  Lexicon NP: General.Dynamics, submarine, VP: built MOD: American ART: a, an, the

Semantic Aspects of Translation12 PHASE I: Semantic Composition  Result of the quantification procedure (Phase II)

Semantic Aspects of Translation13 PHASE I: Semantic Composition  Other Aspects of the SCRs  Multiple Node Lexical Entries “beam of the Henry.L.Stimson” “beam of 33 feet”

Semantic Aspects of Translation14 PHASE I: Semantic Composition  Equiv Arcs “The Henry.L.Stimson is a ship.”

Semantic Aspects of Translation15 PHASE II: Quantification  “Did General.Dynamics build every Lafayette?”  The result of Phase I  “General.Dynamics built a Lafayette.”

Semantic Aspects of Translation16 PHASE II: Quantification  The Quantifiers

Semantic Aspects of Translation17 “Did General.Dynamics build every Lafayette?”

Semantic Aspects of Translation18 “Did General.Dynamics build every Lafayette?”

Semantic Aspects of Translation19 The Use of Case Information