Download Construction Driven Language Processing

Construction Driven Language
Processing
May 2007
Jerry T. Ball
Senior Research Psychologist
Air Force Research Laboratory
Mesa, AZ
Conceptual Ontology
• Object
– anything construed as distinct from everything else
• Relation
– property or attribute of a single object, relation or
situation, or relationship between more than one
objects, relations or situations
• Situation
– action, state, process, location, direction, path, time,
manner or other relation, including the participants in
the relation
Grammatical Functions
• Referring Expression
– Specifier
– Head
• Relational Expression
– Relational Head
– Complements
•
•
•
•
Subject
Direct Object
Indirect Object
Relational Complement
• Modifier
• Coordinator
• Part of Speech
– Relational
• Verb, Adjective, Preposition, Adverb, Coordinator
– Objective
• Noun, Pronoun, Proper Noun
– Functional
• Determiner, Auxiliary Verb, Modal Verb
Referring Expressions
• Head
– word or expression describing the type of object,
relation or situation that the larger expression as
a whole refers to
• Specifier
– referential marker of a referring expression which
determines the type of referring expression
• Referring Expression (RE)
– expression that functions to refer to an object,
relation or situation
• Reference Point (RefPt)
– a complement that ties a referring expression to a
described object, relation or situation via
reference to an associated object, relation or
situation
Referring Expression
(of relational type head)
Specifier
Head
[ Spec Head ] RE
Object Referring Expression
(of relational type head)
Object Specifier Head
the
book
[ thespec bookhead ] ORE
Predicate Referring Expression
(of relational type head)
Predicate Specifier
is
Head
happy
[ isspec happyhead ] PRE
Referring Expression
(of relational type head)
RefPt
Specifier
Head
[ RefPt Spec Head ] RE
Object Referring Expression
(of relational type head)
RefPt-Specifier
John’s
Head
book
[ John’srefpt-spec bookhead ] ORE
Situation Referring Expression
(of relational type head)
RefPt-Specifier
I’m
Head
hungry
[ I’mrefpt-spec hungryhead ] SRE
Relational Expressions
• Relational Expression (RelExpr)
– expression with one or more complements that is
headed by a word or expression describing a
relation
• Relational Head (RelHead)
• Complement (Comp)
– referring expression that is a participant in a
relational expression
Relational Expression
Compsubj
RelHead
Comps(0..3)
[Compsubj RelHead … ] RelExpr
Relational Expression
Compsubj
RelHead
John
smiled
[ Johnsubj smiledrelhead ] RelExpr
Relational Expression
Compsubj
he
RelHead
Compobj
likes
you
[ hesubj likesrelhead youobj] RelExpr
• Modifier (Mod)
– word or expression that constrains the meaning
of the word or expression it modifies without
changing the grammatical function (GF) of the
word or expression
• Coordinator (Coord)
– word or expression that combines two or more
parts of speech or grammatical functions of the
same type, with the resulting expression retaining
the grammatical function of the conjuncts
Mod
GFi
GFi
GFi
GFi
Mod
GFi
GF(0..n)i
Conj
GFi
Head
RelHead
Mod
Head
RelHead
Mod
red
book
run
fast
[ redmod bookhead] head
[ runhead fastmod] relhead
Head
Head
Coord
Head
apples
and
oranges
[ appleshead andcoord orangeshead] head
Construction Driven Language
Processing
• Words and expressions in linguistic input
activate constructions
• Some subset of activated constructions is
selected for subsequent processing
• Selected constructions are integrated into an
evolving representation
Basic Process:
Construction Activation, Selection and Integration
Construction Activation
He is kicking the ball
• he
 [ he ] PRON
• he
 [ heSPEC-HEAD ] ORE
• is
 [ is ] AUX-VERB
• he is
 [ REF-PTCOMP beSPEC PREDICATIONHEAD ] SRE
• kicking
 [ kicking ] VERB
• kicking
 [ SUBJCOMP kickHEAD OBJCOMP ] RELEXPR
• is kicking
 [ beSPEC V-ingHEAD ] PREDICATOR
• the
 [ the ] DET
• the
 [ theSPEC HEAD ] ORE
• ball
 [ ball ] NOUN
• the ball
 [ theSPEC ballHEAD ] ORE
• kicking the ball  [ VHEAD OBJCOMP ] PREDICATION
Construction Selection
• In the simplest case all activated
constructions may be selected for integration
• Competing constructions may result in one
construction being preferred
• Depth of processing (e.g. skimming vs.
reading for full understanding) may affect
construction selection and integration
process
• Assume simplest case in examples that
follow…
Construction Integration
He
ORE
[he ]spec-head
he
SRE
[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]
ORE
[he ]spec-head
he
[is]aux-verb
is
He is
He is kicking
SRE
[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]
ORE
[he ]spec-head
he
PREDICATOR
PREDICATION
[bespec V-inghead]
[kickhead objcomp]
[is]aux-verb
is
[kicking]verb
kicking
SRE
He is kicking the
[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]
PREDICATOR
PREDICATION
[bespec V-inghead]
[kickhead objcomp]
ORE
[he ]spec-head
he
ORE
[is ]aux-verb
is
[kicking]verb
kicking
[thespec head]
the
SRE
He is kicking the ball
[ref-ptcomp bespec predicationhead]
PREDICATOR
PREDN
[bespec V-inghead]
ORE
[he ]spec-head
he
[vhead objcomp]
ORE
[is]aux-verb
is
[kicking]verb
[thespec ballhead]
kicking
the ball
Context Accommodation
• Serial processing without backtracking!
• If current input is unexpected given the prior
context, then accommodate the input
• Related to Lewis’ “Limited Repair Parsing”,
but accommodation is “part and parcel” of
the processing mechanism
• The following example is from the
Computational Cognitive Model which is
under development
– “no airspeed or altitude restrictions”
• Tree structures were automatically generated
from model output using phpSyntaxTree
(Eisenbach & Eisenbach)
No airspeed
No airspeed or altitude
No airspeed or altitude restrictions