LINGUIST List 21.2736

Mon Jun 28 2010

Qs: Automated Antecedent Constituency Tests

Editor for this issue: Danielle St. Jean <daniellelinguistlist.org>


        1.    Rose Hendricks, Automated Antecedent Constituency Tests

Message 1: Automated Antecedent Constituency Tests
Date: 25-Jun-2010
From: Rose Hendricks <rohendricksvassar.edu>
Subject: Automated Antecedent Constituency Tests
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Dear LINGUIST List subscribers,

I am currently doing a linguistic internship at MIT, and I am working witha computer program that simplifies sentences by breaking them intosmaller ones. However, the program has trouble identifying theantecedent of a relative clause when it is preceded by NP1 prep NP2. Itautomatically considers NP2 to be the antecedent, which is problematicfor sentences such as:

"It was an extremely detailed search of the vehicle which recoveredthose bullets."

I think that if the program could identify constituents, it wouldrealize that "search of the vehicle" is one, and could then identify"search" as the antecedent. Are there any constituency tests that donot require serious semantic knowledge (i.e., are there any that acomputer program could be taught to do)? It seems that a test like "canit be the answer to a question?" is too complicated for a computer.

Thank you,Rose HendricksVassar College 2013

Linguistic Field(s): Syntax                             Text/Corpus Linguistics

Page Updated: 28-Jun-2010