building a corpus for learning how to produce atonal pronouns in the romanian clitic sequence

7/28/2019 Building a corpus for learning how to produce atonal pronouns in the Romanian clitic sequence

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Atonal pronouns: Why a special corpus? . . . . . . . . . . . .Language knowledge: How to build it? . . . . . . .Language production: What are the benefits?

Building a corpus for learning how to produce

atonal pronouns in the Romanian clitic

sequence

Ciprian-Virgil Gerstenberger

Universitetet i Troms, Norge

Learner Language, Learner Corpora Conference

LLLC 201206.10.2012 Oulu, Finnland
http://find/


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Outline

Atonal pronouns: Why a special corpus?

Language knowledge: How to build it?

Language production: What are the benefits?
http://find/


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Outline



http://find/http://goback/


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Outline



http://find/


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General question

How to deal with soft constraints in language production?

free word order (e.g., in Finnish) information structure, style?

in-situ vs. extraposed relative clauses (e.g., in German)

clause weight, registrer?

optional sandhi phenomena (e.g., in Romanian)

genre, register, dialect, sociolect, idiolect?
http://find/


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Specific question

What triggers optional realizationsof Romanian atonalpronouns?

(1) a. Te rog sa l faci! [Please, do it!]b. Te rog sa-l faci!

(2) a. Stiu ca i scrii emailuri. [I know that you write him/her emails.]

b. Stiu ca-i scrii emailuri.

(3) a. Hai sa ne apucam de treaba! [Lets start working!]

b. Hai sa ne-apucam de treaba!

? ? ?
http://find/


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(External) SandhiJoining

Epenthesis in English: acar vs. anold car

Elision in French: lafille[the girl] vs. lglise[the church]

Elision in Romanian: Tulvezi. vs. Tu-lvezi.[You see him/it.]

Sandhi can be marked graphically but it doesnt have to.

Elision in Romanian is always graphically marked !

At l Wh i l ? L k l d H t b ild it? L d ti Wh t th b fit ?
http://find/


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Sandhi in RomanianGeneral Rule: avoid hiatus

CV VC

C-VC

M aapuc de treab a. [I start working.]

M-apuc de treab a.

CV-C

Tulvezi. [You see him/it.]

Tu-lvezi.

CV

-VC

Teapuci de treab a. [You start working.]

Te-apuci de treab a.

Atonal pronouns: Why a special corpus? Language knowledge: How to build it? Language production: What are the benefits?
http://find/


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Romanian atonal pronounsAccusative

Number Person Type Gender Syllabic Non-syllabic

onset coda

Sg 1. pers/refl m/f [m@] ma [m] m-

2. pers/refl m/f [te] te [te

] te-

3. pers m [l] l- [l] -l/l

f [o] o [o

] o-

relf m/f [se] se [s] s-, [se

] se-

Pl 1. pers/refl m/f [ne] ne [ne

] ne-

2. pers/refl m/f [v@] va [v] v- 3. pers m [i

] i- [j] -i/i

f [le] le [le

] le-

relf m/f [se] se [s] s-, [se

] se-

http://find/


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Romanian atonal pronounsDative

Number Person Type Syllabic Non-syllabic

onset coda

Sg 1. pers/refl [mi] mi [mi] mi- [mj] -mi/mi

2. pers/refl [tsi] ti [tsi] ti- [tsj] -ti/ti

3. pers [i] i [i] i- [j] -i/i

relf [Si] si [Si] si- [Sj] -si/si

Pl 1. pers/refl [ni] ni, [ne] ne [ne

] ne-

2. pers/refl [vi] vi, [v@] va [v] v-

3. pers [li] li, [le] le [le

] le-

relf [Si] si [Si] si- [Sj] -si/si



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Problems from a learners perspectiveObligatory sandhi

atonal pronouns

*M-am apucat de treab a. [Ive started to work.]

*M aam apucat de treab a.

elsewhere

*ntr-un vis de var a [in a summer dream]

*ntreun vis de var a



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Problems from a learners perspectiveOptional sandhi

atonal pronouns

M-apuc de treab a. [I start to work.]

M aapuc de treab a.

elsewhere

Os-aduc cartea. [Ill bring the book.]

Os aaduc cartea.

http://find/


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Problems from a learners perspectiveHyphennated non-reduced (=syllabic) forms

as phonological hosts

Til cumperi. [You buy it (for yourself).]

S a numiti pierzi timpul cu asa ceva! [Dont loose you time with such things.]

in postverbal position

Duteacas a! [Go home!]

as phonological hosts in postverbal positionCump ar atil ! [Buy it!]

http://find/


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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .p y p p . . . . . . . . . . . .g g g . . . . . . .g g p

Problems from a learners perspectiveUnderstanding: What kind of hyphen is it?

hyphen as unreliable indicator for reduced forms

Tiai cump arat cartea. [Youve bought the book!]

Til cumperi. [You buy it.]

Tiocumperi. [You buy it.]

S ati cumperi cartea! [Buy the book!]



Cump ar atil! [Buy it (for yourself)!]

Cump ar a--l! [Buy it!] Cump ar a--ti cartea! [Buy the book!]

gray = syllabic atonal pronoun black = reduced atonal pronoun

non-syllabic post-verbal --non-syllabic AN D post-verbal

http://find/


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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .p y p p . . . . . . . . . . . .g g g . . . . . . .g g p

Problems from a learners perspectiveUnderstanding: Which phonological form is it?

grapheme-phoneme ambiguity

Cump ar a-ti-l![Buy it!] /Ti-l cumperi.[You buy it!] [tsi]

Cump ar a-ticartea![Buy the book!] /ticumperi cartea.[You buy the book.] [tsj]

Ti-ai cump arat cartea.[You

ve bought the book.

] [tsi]

http://find/


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Problems from a learners perspectiveProduction: To hyphenate or not to hyphenate?

obligatory or optional hyphenation?

if optional, reduced or non-reduced form?

http://find/


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Problems from a learners perspectiveProduction: To hyphenate or not to hyphenate?

obligatory or optional hyphenation?

if optional, reduced or non-reduced form?

http://find/


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The choice issueWell-balanced mixture of jointed vs. non-jointed forms

defining well-balanceness?

domain of well-balanceness: clause, sentence, paragraph, text?

counting only optional or both obligatory and optional instances?

alignment, parallelity?

Trebuie s-ofaci si s-odregi! [You have to do it and to mend it!] Trebuie s aofaci si s aodregi!

Trebuie s aofaci si s-odregi!

Trebuie s-ofaci si s aodregi!

Different rhythm! A matter of style?



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The choice issueSpeech rate

Alexandra Popescu (2003) Morphophonologische Phnomene des

Rumnischen, PhD thesis, University of Dsseldorf, 2003

Optimality-Theoretic model:

reduced forms always win in faster speech rate non-reduced forms always win in normal speech rate

Popescu (2003), Ex. (21), p. 160

http://find/


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The choice issueSpeech rate (cont.)


Rumnischen, PhD thesis, University of Dsseldorf, 2003

speech rate is relative: no experimental setup

speech rate vs. number of syllable per time unit? what about rhythm?

Emil Boc, du-te-acas a/ Si apuc a-te de coas a!

Emil Boc, go home/ And start scything!



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The choice issueSpeech rate (cont.)


Rumnischen, PhD thesis, University of Dsseldorf, 2003: (p. 179)

the OT model fails to account for all presented data

Es ist allerdings unklar, warum der Kandidat mit dem Vollvokal [1] neben dem

Kandidaten c. mit dem Vollvokal [i] beim Normalsprechen gewinnen kann, obwohl er

nach dem bisherigen Ranking schlechter ist als der Kandidat mit dem Vollvokal.



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The choice issueMode, register, style

Maria Iliescu (1975) Pentru o sistematizare a pred arii pronumelui personal

neaccentuat romnesc (la studentii str aini), In Limba Romna 24, 1975

n limba literar a ngrijit a se prefer a proume nelegatein well-groomed literary style, non-bound pronouns are preferred

n stilul beletristic formele enlitice apar mai desin beletristic style, enclitic forms occur more often

fuzzy formulations: "are prefered", "occur more often" how to define well-groomedness?

how many styles to define?



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Usage-based approachCorpus-driven solution

ObservationRealization of some optional reduced atonal pronouns occur far moreoften than their non-reduced counterparts.

Jrgen Bredemeier (1976) Strukturbeschrnkungen im Rumnischen. Studien zur

Syntax der pr- und postverbalen Pronomina, TBL Verlag Gunter Narr, 1976

Why?

How often? Look into relevant data!



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Web as Corpus?

"Du-te-acas a!"

No fine-tuning possible!



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Web as Corpus

offering a wide range of usage-based instances of everything

improvements (e.g., sematic web) are not (yet) useful for thecurrent research issue

even simple but relevant distinctions are not possible without amassive data cleanup (diacritica, hypens, misspellings, sloppyformulations, etc.)

Far too expensive at the moment!

http://find/


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Use existing CorporaOdense Grammatically Annotated Corpus of Romanian Business

Revista pe care ati realizat-omi-aatras atentia

annotation and preprocessing changed the original string

lacking atonal pronouns and auxiliaries, dangling hyphens

Not of much use!

http://find/


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What to do?

Build a special corpus!



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General ideas

account for specific phenomena (encountered instanced plus alloptional variants)

provide additional necessary linguistic annotation(part-of-speech)

add accessible, relevant infos (spoken, written, genre, etc.)

enable unification of specific annotated data with other layers(syntax, semantics, information structure)

keep the original string on place use as much as possible copyright-free data



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Experimental data setEuroparl Corpus

Romanian part of the Europart Corpus

parallel corpus extracted from the proceedings of the European

Parliament

original purpose: Statistical Machine Translation (SMT)

freely available

compared to Google data, much cleaner

yet, still a huge amount of cleanup work

http://find/


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Data evaluation

size after the first cleaned up and broken into sentences usingthe default tools224417 inc_europarl_ro.sent.txt

size after cleanup foreign sentences and diacritica correction

223622 europarl_ro.sent.xml pseudo-senteces, formulaic senteces (parliament meetings)

http://find/


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Usable data for the research question

search for lines with at least a hyphen56155

unique instances53897

Filter irrelevant hypen occurences!

Search for the non-reduced pronominal forms!

http://find/


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Language knowledgeThe small universe of atonal pronouns in Romanian

local phenomenon

relatively small number of forms

modelling any possible combination (even non-grammaticalones aka mal rules in error modelling)

exhausitve modelling

http://find/


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Language knowledgeExample: 1pers, Sg, Acc



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Annotation runCurrent state

pattern + context-testing functions current annotation state

add all other optional forms licensed by the given context

http://find/


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Annotation runIntended state

Part-of-speech information needed!

http://find/


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Part-of-Speech annotationCurrent state

whole corpus pos-tagged using

http://www.racai.ro/webservices/TextProcessing.aspx

http://www.racai.ro/webservices/TextProcessing.aspxhttp://find/


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Towards the final formatSteps to do

transform the MULTEX pos annotation into an xml format

unify the annotation of optional sandhi with the pos annotation

... and then?

http://find/


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... starts the real linguistic fun!Using the whole potential of the linguistic annotation

Is there a significant difference between the occurences ofs a mi vs. s a-mi and, e.g., c a ti vs. c a-ti?

taking more context into account (item before subjunction + itemafter the atonal pronoun) and count the syllable of the extendedcontext?

What about the rhythm changes in the context (cf. the hugeamount and variation of reduced forms in the Romanian poetry)?

include stylometric measurements

What triggers the choice of a specific surface form?

http://find/


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Extending the linguistic playgroundAnnotating more (copyright-free) data

Romanian part of the JRC-Acquis Multilingual Parallel Corpus

DEX Dictionarul Explicativ al Limbii Romne

Romanian Wikipedia

articles (elaborated, well-formulated text) comments (informal, more personal)

Copyright-free data is shareable data!


N l L G i L L i
http://find/


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Natural Language Generation vs. Language Learning

sharing the need to produce well-formed, situationally adequatenatural language utterances

Why not sharing the knowledge as well?

Why not the resources, too?

Sharing data is not like sharing a slice of bread,

rather like Jesus bread and fish miracle!


M hi h
http://find/


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Machine vs. humanTransferability of constraint formulation from NLG to LL

Is the constraint formatization from NLG transferable to the LLdomain?

Yes! Linearization and surface realization have to be applied onperceivable entities.

no room to generate partially empty strings

no room to linearize traces or empty categories


E l f t i t f l ti i NLG
http://find/


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Example of constraint formulation in NLGObligatory sandhy in the sequence of atonal pronouns

Rule: The rightmost item in the atonal pronoun sequence can not be an open syllablewith nucleus [i].

Assuming the base form [ni] ni:Is it the rightmost atonal pron in the sequence?

1. yes change from [ni] ni to [ne] neIs there on the left an item to obligatorily attach to?

1.1 yes (e.g., [ne] ne[a] a dat)

attach [ne

a] ne-a dat1.2 no (e.g., [ne] ne[dai

] dai)

done [ne dai] ne dai2. no (e.g., [ni] ni [le] le[dai

] dai)

done [ni le dai] ni le dai


O ti l dhi h
http://find/


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Optional sandhi phenomenaExploting the specific language model

analyse the context

consult the specific language model

give hints to students wrt. most appropriate form to choose


Further possible applications
http://find/


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Further possible applicationsExploiting specific language resources

design and implementation of different types of languagelearning exercises for training atonal pronouns

specific feedback to production error types because of mal-rulelike coding of non-licensed forms

enriching existing analysis tools (parsers) with specificinformation


Human vs machine
http://find/


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Human vs. machineNLG too much of a technique, too little of a science

Using NLG techniques for LL: rara avis

Karin Harbusch et Al (2009) Computing Accurate Grammatical Feedback in a Virtual

Writing Conference for German-Speaking Elementary-School Children: An Approach

Based on Natural Language Generation, CALICO Journal, 26(3), 2009

Using LL research insights for NLG

NLG too much of a Fiat!-domain: from the very beginning

NLG paying very little attention to surface phenomena such as

language variation or even orthography

modelling human language production: a real plus for NLG


Conclusions
http://find/


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Conclusions

motivating the need for special corpora for learning how to makedecisions in case of optional surface realization

reporting on the cumbersome process of building resources forspecial phenomena

stressing the need of resource and insights sharing betweenfields with similar goals

underlining the benefits of sharing resource between NLG andLL wrt. realization of atonal pronouns in Romanian

Share resources!

building a corpus for learning how to produce atonal pronouns in the romanian clitic sequence

Documents