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Situation Semantics and Machine Translation

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Situation Semantics and Machine Translation SITUATION SEMANTICS AND MACHINE TRANSLATION. C.J. Rupp CCL, UMIST P.O. Box 88 Manchester M60 1QD Introduction Situation Semantics: The Basics. Situation Semantics is one of the most Situation Semantics is an informational recent and controversial theories in approach to formal semantics. The formal semantics. Machine Translation philosophical basis of this theory is laid (MT) is a highly complex application out in Barwise and Perry's Situations domain, in which research is expensive and Attitudes (1983) (henceforth B&P). of both time and resources. On the Most of the structure of the theory can surface, the space for interaction be seen as arising out of three basic between these two fields would seem concepts. fairly limited, and in practice the the application of formal semantics in MT Attunement: has been very limited, a notable ... an organism must be attuned to exception being the Rosetta project similarities between situations, what (Landsbergen 1982, 1987). The abstract we have called uniformities, and to translation problem however remains relationships that obtain between and any application must be based on these uniformities... (B&P plO) some formalisation of the problem. Constraints: The purpose of this paper is demonstrate that the enriched ... systematic relations of a special theoretical vocabulary of Situation sort between different types of Semantics offers a more intuitive situation .... These systematic characterisation of the translation constraints are what allow one process, than was .possible using more situation to contain information traditional semanuc theories. This about another. Attunement to these demonstration will take the form of a constraints is what allows an agent to formalisation of the most commonly used pick up information from one method for MT in terms of Situation situation about another. (B&P p94) Semantic constructs. In this respect this Partiality: paper follows on from a previous paper (Johnson, Rosner & Rupp 1988), in Situation types are partial. They which MT was presented as a testing don't say everything there is to say ground for semantic representation about everyone or even everything languages. This paper will turn the issue about the individuals appearing in the around and consider what the theory of situation type. (B&P p9) Situation Semantics has to offer to an The other main features of the theory MT application. The abstract description can be seen as arising out of the of the MT system to be considered will interaction of these three concepts. The therefore remain the same. combination of attunement with The paper consists of a basic constraints, when applied to the problem introduction to the machinery of of linguistic meaning, leads to the Situation Semantics, an examination of relation theory of meaning. This states the problem of translation, a formal that language users are attuned to a description of a transfer-based MT particular type of constraint which system and some examples of the kind relates the situation in which an of lexical transfer one would expect to utterance is made with the situation it is define in such a system. about. Put more formally: a sentence - 308 - relates an utterance situation, u, and a original notion. Speaker connections are described situation, s. therefore the set of culturally specific constraints to which the users of a u[ ls particular language are attuned in order The notion of efficiency arises out of to permit them to assign meaning to the interaction of this relation theory of occurrences of its expressions. meaning with the notion of partiality. Before considering some more recent Natural language expressions only carry developments associated with Situation a certain amount of information and so Semantics, it will be useful to sketch only partially determine the range of some of the distinctions between this appropriate utterance and described theory and more traditional semantic situations. They can therefore be said to theories, such as Montague Semantics, be efficient in that they can be used for with particular reference to the various purposes. The notion of implications that these may have for an efficiency implies a clear distinction MT methodology, as in Landsbergen's between meaning and interpretation. It Rosetta (Landsbergen 1982, 1987). is only possible to arrive at a full Partiality is the most obvious interpretation by anchoring the utterance characteristic of Situation Semantics, situation and, as a consequence, the when compared to traditional possible described situation to actual situations. world semantics of the Montagovian The sentence itself carries only meaning. variety. In traditional theories truth This theory is sufficiently fine-grained conditions take priority over content. to permit further distinctions within the The interpretation of a sentence is the utterance situation, which contains two set of possible worlds in which it would differing types of information: the be true. Each such world is total and discourse situation and speaker therefore fully determines the answer to connections. The discourse situation is any possible question that could be that part of the utterance situation asked about it. Some sentences will be concerned with the external facts of the necessarily true and be assigned the set discourse, such as the identity of the of all possible worlds as an speaker and hearer, the temporal and interpretation making them spatial location of the conversation and indistinguishable from one another. perhaps even information about the Others, including all sentences with a mental states of the speaker and hearer. necessary truth as a constituent part, The discourse situation must be form sets of logically equivalent anchored before an interpretation can be sentences each receiving the same determined. Speaker connections are interpretation. This results in a situation concerned with the linguistic attunement where attempts to generate a sentence that must be shared by the speaker and from its interpretation might result in a hearer for effective communication. The sentence with completely different meaning relation can therefore be content or the required sentence restated in terms of a discourse conjoined with a potentially infinite set situation, d, speaker connections, c, and of necessar)', truths. Hence B&P's described situation, s. argument m favour of partial interpretations which contain only a d,c[~]s fixed amount of information. This is also The notion of speaker connections one of the reasons why MT systems assumed in this paper differs slightly based on Montague Semantics have from that used in B&P, which was been predominantly concerned with concerned primarily with determining the derivation rather than representing the reference of certain clearly referential interpretation of sentences. phrases, such as proper names and The relation theory of meaning also definite descriptions. In this paper it is represents a much greater balance assumed that most words are in some between context and content than more sense referential although their referents traditional theories, where context is may be complex partial objects; this usually limited to the determination of a would seem a natural extension of the few indexical terms. Although it has not - 309- yet been adequately explored, the comment (Barwise & Perry 1985, p143). contextual side of the meaning relation Unification-based approaches to does implicitly contain the possibility of Situation Semantics generally require representing aspects of the informational the inclusion of a level of abstract structure of texts, which is of essential representation which only partially importance in producing representations determines the range of possible for languages such as Japanese or interpretations. This can be seen as the German, where informational structure meaning carried by the sentence under a directly affects syntax. It is not possible range of interpretations, but it will be to treat such languages in any depth less ambiguous that the original even with derivational techniques, when sentence as different syntactic analyses only truth conditional information can be will give rise to different representations. recorded. It is possible to state the meaning Finally traditional semantic theories relation imposed by such a assume a static and total interpretation representation or situation schema in function, which assigns denotations to the same terms as were used for the lexical items. This poses two distinct sentence. problems when considering translation. Firstly in the case of words with more d,c[sit.~]s than one sense it is not obvious how to The relation between a sentence, decide which denotation to choose. and its representation sit.qb will be given What is required is a more dynamic by a grammar G, which maps strings of a mechanism which permits the preferred language L to members of a class of reading to vary according to the context. representations R, (which will be in the Secondly there is the implicit form of Directed Acyclic Graphs). In assumption that the range of possible order to reflect the semantic relation denotations is common to both between these two objects it will be languages concerned, and if we reject necessary to define two auxiliary this assumption we are faced with the "interpretation functions" which metaphysical problem of constructing determine the set of possible appropriate denotations for each interpretations so that language out of an unknown set of primitives, with no philosophical
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