Skip to main content
Log in

Acquisition of lexical translation relations from MRDS

Machine Translation

Abstract

In this paper we present a methodology for extracting information about lexical translation equivalences from the machine readable versions of conventional dictionaries (MRDs), and describe a series of experiments on semi-automatic construction of a linked multilinguallexical knowledge base for English, Dutch, and Spanish. We discuss the advantages and limitations of using MRDs that this has revealed, and some strategies we have developed to cover gaps where no direct translation can be found.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ageno, A., I. Castellon, G. Rigau, H. Rodriguez, and M.F. Verdejo. 1992. SEISD: An Environment for Extraction of Semantic Information from On-Line Dictionaries. InProceedings of the 3rd Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing (ANLP-92), pages 253–255, Trento, Italy.

  • Ageno, A., F. Ribas, G. Rigau, H. Rodriguez, and F. Verdejo. 1993. TGE: Tlinks Generation Environment. Technical Report ACQUILEX II Working a paper 8, Cambridge.

  • Ageno, A., F. Ribas, G. Rigau, H. Rodriguez, and A. Samiotou. 1994. TGE: Tlinks Generation Environment. InProceedings of the 15th International Congress on Computational Linguistics (COLING-94), Kyoto, Japan.

  • Alshawi, H., D. Carter, M. Rayner, and B. Gambäck. 1991. Translation by Quasi Logical Form Transfer. InProceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-91), pages 161–168, Berkeley, California.

  • Boguraev, B. and E.J. Briscoe, editors. 1989.Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing. Longman, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Briscoe, E.J. 1991. Lexical Issues in Natural Language Processing. In E. Klein and F. Veltman, editors,Natural language and speech. Springer-Verlag, pages 39–68.

  • Calzolari, N. 1992. Acquiring and Representing Semantic Information in a Lexical Knowledge Base. In J. Pustejovsky and S. Bergler, editors,Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pages 235–244. Lecture Notes in AI: 627.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, R. 1992.The Logic of Typed Feature Structures. Cambridge University Press. Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science.

  • Carroll, J. and C. Grover. 1989. The Derivation of a Large Computational Lexicon for English from LDOCE. In B. Boguraev and E.J. Briscoe, editors,Computational lexicography for natural language processing. Longman, London, pages 117–134.

    Google Scholar 

  • Copestake, A. 1990. An Approach to Building the Hierarchical Element of a Lexical Knowledge Base from a Machine Readable Dictionary. InProceedings of the First International Workshop on Inheritance in Natural Language Processing, pages 19–29, Tilburg, The Netherlands.

  • Copestake, A. 1992. The ACQUILEX LKB: Representation Issues in Semi-automatic Acquisition of Large Lexicons. InProceedings of the 3rd Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing (ANLP-92), pages 88–96, Trento, Italy.

  • Copestake, A. 1993. The Compleat LKB. Technical Report 316, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

  • Copestake, A. and E.J. Briscoe. 1995. Semi-Productive Polysemy and Sense Extension.Semantics, 12:15–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Copestake, A., B. Jones, A. Sanfilippo, H. Rodriguez, P. Vossen, S. Montemagni, and E. Marinai. 1992. Multilingual Lexical Representation. Technical Report 253, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. The (other) Cambridge ACQUILEX papers.

  • Copestake, A. and A. Sanfilippo. 1993. Multilingual Lexical Representation. InProceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, Stanford, CA.

  • Dowty, D. 1991. Thematic Proto-Roles and Argument Selection.Language, 67:547–619.

    Google Scholar 

  • Estival, D., A. Ballim, G. Russell, and S. Warwick. 1990. A Syntax and Semantics for Feature Structure Transfer. InProceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Theoretical and Methodological Issues in MT of NLs (TMI-90), pages 131–143, Austin, Texas.

  • Gaya, S. Gili. 1987.Diccionario General Ilustrado de la Lengua Española VOX. Biblograf S.A., Barcelona.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaya, S. Gili. 1992.VOX Harraps Diccionario Esencial: Inglés-Español Español-Inglés. Biblograf S.A., Barcelona, second edition.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helmreich, S., L. Guthrie, and Y. Wilks. 1993. The Use of Machine Readable Dictionaries in the Pangloss Project. InProceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, Stanford University.

  • Hutchins, W.J. and H.L. Somers, editors. 1992.An Introduction to Machine Translation. Academic Press, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, R., K. Netter, J. Wedekind, and A. Zaenen. 1989. Translation by Structural Correspondences. InProceedings of the 4th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL-89), pages 272–281, Manchester, UK.

  • Kay, M., J-M. Gawron, and P. Norvig, editors. 1994.Verbmobil: A Translation System for Face-to-Face Dialog. CSLI Lecture Notes, No. 33. University of Chicago Press.

  • Klavans, J.L. 1988. COMPLEX: A Computational Lexicon for Natural Language Systems. InProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (Coling-88), Budapest, Hungary.

  • Klavans, J.L., M.S. Chodorow, and N. Wacholder. 1990. From Dictionary to Knowledge Base via Taxonomy. InProceedings of the Sixth Conference of the University of Waterloo Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary and Text Research: Electronic Text Research, University of Waterloo, Canada.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levin, B., editor. 1993.English Verb Classes and Alternations. Chicago University Press, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marti, M.A. and C. Soler. 1994. Dealing with Lexical Mismatches. InProceedings of EURALEX-94, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

  • Martin, W. and G.A.J. Tops, editors. 1984.Groot Woordenboek Engels-Nederlands. Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, W. and G.A.J. Tops, editors. 1986.Groot Woordenboek Nederlands-Engels. Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Messinger, H. and G. Türck, editors. 1990.Deutsch-Englisch Langenscheidts Taschenwörterbücher. Langenscheidt, Berlin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neff, M., B. Blaser, J-M Lange, H. Lehmann, and I. Dominguez. 1993. Get It Where You Can: Acquiring and Maintaining Bilingual Lexicons for Machine Translation. InProceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, Stanford University, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Neff, M. and M. McCord. 1990. Acquiring Lexical Data from Machine-Readable Dictionary Resources for Machine Translation. InThird International Conference on Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation of Natural Languages (TMI-90), Austin, Texas.

  • Nirenburg, S. and V. Raskin. 1988. The Subworld Concept Lexicon and the Lexicon Management System.Computational Linguistics, 13(3–4):276–289.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nirenburg, S., V. Raskin, and A. B. Tucker. 1987. The Structure of Interlingua in TRANSLATOR. In S. Nirenburg, editor,Machine Translation: Theoretical and Methodological Issues. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pages 90–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Procter, P., editor. 1978.Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Longman, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pustejovsky, J. 1991. The Generative Lexicon.Computational Linguistics, 17(4):409–441.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samiotou, A. 1993. Performance of Cross-linguistic Equivalence Relations: A Lexicon-based approach. Master's thesis, Centre for Computational Linguistics, UMIST, England.

    Google Scholar 

  • Samiotou, A., I. Castellon, F. Ribas, and G. Rigau. 1994. Translation Equivalence via Lexicon: A Study on Tlinks. Technical Report ACQUILEX II Working paper 25, Cambridge.

  • Sanfilippo, A. 1993. LKB Encoding of Lexical Knowledge from Machine-readable Dictionaries. In E.J. Briscoe, A. Copestake, and V. de Paiva, editors,Inheritance, Defaults and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pages 190–222.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanfilippo, A., E.J. Briscoe, A. Copestake, M. A. Marti, and A. Alonge. 1992. Translation Equivalence and Lexicalization in the ACQUILEX LKB. InProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Machine Translation (TMI-92), Montreal, Canada.

  • Sanfilippo, A. and V. Poznanski. 1992. The Acquisition of Lexical Knowledge from Combined Machine-Readable Dictionary Sources. InProceedings of the 3rd Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing (ANLP-92), pages 80–88, Trento, Italy.

  • Shieber, S.M., editor. 1986.An Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar. CSLI, Stanford University, Stanford CA. CSLI Lecture Notes 4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sutcliffe, R. 1993. Using Distributed Patterns as Language Independent Lexical Representations. InProceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Building Lexicons for Machine Translation, Stanford University.

  • Talmy, L. 1985. Lexicalization patterns. In T. Shopen, editor,Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Cambridge University Press.

  • Trujillo, A. 1995. Towards a Cross-Linguistically Valid Classification of Spatial Prepositions.Machine Translation, 10(1–2), forthcoming.

  • van Sterkenburg, P. and W.J.J. Pijnenburg, editors. 1984.Groot Woordenboek van Hedendaags Nederlands. Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vossen, P. 1990. A Parser-Grammar for the Meaning Descriptions of LDOCE. Technical Report Links Project Technical Report 300-169-007, Amsterdam University.

  • Vossen, P. 1991. Converting Data from a Lexical Database to a Knowledge Base. Technical Report ACQUILEX Working paper 27, University of Amsterdam.

  • Vossen, P. 1992. The Automatic Construction of a Knowledge Base from Dictionaries: A Combination of Techniques. In H. Tommola, K. Tarantola, T. Salmin Tolonen, and J. Schop, editors,Proceedings of EURALEX-92 (Vol. 1–2), Tampere, Finland.

  • Vossen, P. 1993. Extracting Equivalence Relations for a Multilingual Lexical Knowledge Base. Technical Report ACQUILEX 2 Working Paper No. 14, University of Amsterdam.

  • Vossen, P. and A. Copestake. 1993. Untangling Definition Structure into Representation. In E.J. Briscoe, A. Copestake, and V. de Paiva, editors,Defaults, Inheritance and the Lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, pages 246–274.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vossen, P., W. Meijs, and M. Broeder. 1989. Meaning and Structure in Dictionary Definitions. In B. Boguraev and E.J. Briscoe, editors,Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing. Longman, London, pages 171–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker, D. and R. Amsler. 1986. The Use of Machine-readable Dictionaries in Sublanguage Analysis. In R. Grishman and R. Kittredge, editors,Analyzing Language in Restricted Domains. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, pages 69–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitelock, P. 1992. Shake-and-Bake Translation. InProceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING-92), Nantes, France.

  • Wilks, Y., D. Fass, C-M. Guo, J. McDonald, T. Plate, and B. Slator. 1989. A Tractable Machine Dictionary as a Resource for Computational Semantics. In B. Boguraev and E.J. Briscoe, editors,Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing. Longman, London, pages 193–231.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zajac, R. 1989. A Transfer Model Using a Typed Feature Structure Rewriting System with Inheritance. InProceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-89), pages 1–7, Vancouver, BC.

  • Zeevat, H., E. Klein, and J. Calder. 1987. An Introduction to Unification Categorial Grammar. In N. Haddock, E. Klein, and G. Morrill, editors,Categorial Grammar, Unification Grammar, and Parsing: Working Papers in Cognitive Science, Volume 1. Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh, pages 195–222.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gopestake, A., Briscoe, T., Vossen, P. et al. Acquisition of lexical translation relations from MRDS. Mach Translat 9, 183–219 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00980578

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00980578

Keywords

Navigation