Fw: [FUNKNET] extension of "the"

[Alexander Gross]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexander Gross" <language at sprynet.com>
To: "Rob Malouf" <rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 9:42 PM
Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] extension of "the"


> Thanks, Rob, i've been reading similar literature for the past 25 years &
> first discussed this problem in the early 'sixties with my brother-in-law
> Morton Astrahan, the IBM VP then in charge of preparing their MT project.
> He was pretty sure they'd have most of the bugs ironed out in time for
their
> demonstration at the NY World's Fair of 1964.
>
> A lot of this depends on who is doing the reporting.  You might want to
look
> at the following on-line report in the current Translation Journal:
>
> Machine Translation and Computer-Assisted Translation: a New Way of
> Translating?
> by Olivia Craciunescu, Constanza Gerding-Salas, and Susan
Stringer-O'Keeffe,
>
> it's at:
>
> http://www.accurapid.com/journal/29computers.htm
>
> very best!
>
> alex
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rob Malouf" <rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu>
> To: "Alexander Gross" <language at sprynet.com>
> Cc: <funknet at mailman.rice.edufunknet@mailman.rice.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2004 6:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] extension of "the"
>
>
> >
> > On Aug 29, 2004, at 1:24 PM, Alexander Gross wrote:
> > > Since you (singular and plural) imagine that it will one day be
> > > possible to construct an "adequate" machine translation system,
> > > here is *your* little assignment.  It's easy, it's all in English.  I
> > > want you to come up with the precise, practical rules by which
> > > we decide to put "the" in front of a noun as opposed to when
> > > we decide to put "a" or "an" in front of a noun as opposed to
> > > when we decide to put absolutely nothing ("zero-grade article")
> > > in front of a noun.   Also: precisely when do we have a choice
> > > between two possible methods?
> >
> > While no one (that I know of) has written such rules, there's been
> > considerable work on addressing this problem using machine learning and
> > statistical models.  For example, this paper reports some early
> > experiments:
> >
> > http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/minnen00memorybased.html
> >
> > I know they've improved on these results since then, but I can't find
> > the reference off hand.  At any rate, the performance of the best
> > models is getting close to that of humans at guessing which article
> > will be used in a given context.
> > ---
> > Rob Malouf
> > rmalouf at mail.sdsu.edu
> > Department of Linguistics and Oriental Languages
> > San Diego State University
> >
> >
>