Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 An introduction to lexical semantics from a linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective
- Part I Psycholinguistics for lexical semantics
- Part II Foundational issues in lexical semantics
- Part III Lexical databases
- Part IV Lexical semantics and artificial intelligence
- Part V Applications
- 17 Lexical functions of the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary for lexicalization in text generation
- 18 A lexical-semantic solution to the divergence problem in machine translation
- Part VI Computer models for lexical semantics
- Author index
- Subject index
18 - A lexical-semantic solution to the divergence problem in machine translation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 An introduction to lexical semantics from a linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective
- Part I Psycholinguistics for lexical semantics
- Part II Foundational issues in lexical semantics
- Part III Lexical databases
- Part IV Lexical semantics and artificial intelligence
- Part V Applications
- 17 Lexical functions of the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary for lexicalization in text generation
- 18 A lexical-semantic solution to the divergence problem in machine translation
- Part VI Computer models for lexical semantics
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
One of the most difficult areas for research in machine translation (MT) is the representation of meanings in the lexicon. The lexicon plays a central role in any MT system, regardless of the theoretical foundations upon which the system is based. However, it is only recently that MT researchers have begun to focus more specifically on issues that concern the lexicon, e.g., cross-linguistic variations that arise during the mapping between lexical items in the source and target languages.
The traditional approach to constructing dictionaries for MT has been to massage on-line dictionaries that are primarily intended for human consumption. Given that most natural language applications have focused primarily on syntactic information that can be extracted from the lexicon, these methods have constituted a reasonable first-pass approach to the problem. However, it is now widely accepted that MT requires language-independent conceptual information in order to successfully process a wide range of phenomena in more than one language. Thus, the task of constructing lexical entries has become a much more difficult problem as researchers endeavor to extend the concept base to support more phenomena and additional languages.
This chapter describes how parameterization of the lexicon allows an MT system to account for a number of cross-linguistic variations, called divergences, during translation. There are many cases in which the natural translation of one language into another results in a very different form than that of the original. These divergences make the straightforward transfer from source structures into target structures impractical.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Computational Lexical Semantics , pp. 367 - 396Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995