Aravind K. Joshi

In this paper we present some novel applications of Explanation-Based Learning (EBL) technique to parsing Lexicalized Tree-Adjoining grammars. The novel aspects are (a) immediate generalization of parses in the training set, (b) generalization over recursive structures and (c) representation of generalized parses as Finite State Transducers. A highly impoverished parser called a ``stapler'' has also been introduced. We present experimental results using EBL for different corpora and architectures to show the effectiveness of our approach.

It is often argued that accurate machine translation requires reference to contextual knowledge for the correct treatment of linguistic phenomena such as dropped arguments and accurate lexical selection. One of the historical arguments in favor of the interlingua approach has been that, since it revolves around a deep semantic representation, it is better able to handle the types of linguistic phenomena that are seen as requiring a knowledge-based approach. In this paper we present an alternative approach, exemplified by a prototype system for machine translation of English and Korean which is implemented in Synchronous TAGs. This approach is essentially transfer based, and uses semantic feature unification for accurate lexical selection of polysemous verbs. The same semantic features, when combined with a discourse model which stores previously mentioned entities, can also be used for the recovery of topicalized arguments. In this paper we concentrate on the translation of Korean to English.