DEFINITE VS. INDEFINITE INTERPRETATION OF RUSSIAN NOUN PHRASES: A PROPOSAL OF A FORMAT FOR COMPLEX EVALUATION RULES
Christa Hauenschild · Journal of Semantics · 1985
This paperaimsatan illustration of a special type of linguistic rule that has been developed for a text understanding model within a project of (partial) simulation of the processes of understanding and translating natural-language texts. The rules in question are to reflect different degrees of probability with respect to certain interpretation hypotheses on the basis of the interaction of different types of linguistic as well as non-linguistic information relevant to a given interpretation hypothesis. This type of relative rule for (partial) interpretations is exemplified with a paradigm problem of machine translation: the definite vs. indefinite interpretation of Russian noun phrases, which normally do not contain any locally unambiguous expressions of definiteness or indefiniteness (as e.g. articles are). Given the enormous complexity of the whole problem of interpreting such noun phrases (all kinds of linguistic and extra-linguistic criteria may have to be considered), I concentrate on the case of couples of noun phrases with identical heads. The interpretation hypothesis to be evaluated is the following: the two noun phrases in question are identical in reference, and thus the second is definite. The main task consists in determining the factors that yield relative positive or negative evidence for the given hypothesis. After a short discussion of the underlying text understanding model and of the definitions of the basic concepts (anaphoricity, identity of reference, definiteness/indefiniteness, sentential and textual themeness), I give the list of single factors that are relevant for the interpretation task in question. Then the corresponding single-factor rules are combined in a global evaluation rule, the functioning of which is illustrated with the aid of a simple example. Finally, I discuss the merits and shortcomings of the proposed format for complex evaluation rules as well as the potential role of such rules within a machine translation system.