JPH0454563A - Translation system for japanese appositive noun phrase - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To translate the appositive expressions of Japanese words after recognizing them as the correct appositive expressions not as the parallel expressions by obtaining an object language appositive noun phrase by reference to a generated Japanese appositive noun phrase structure and a Japanese-object language conversion dictionary when an appositive relation is secured in terms of even meaning. CONSTITUTION:A word structure analyzer 2 divides a Japanese appositive noun phrase into words with a Japanese word analysis dictionary 11 and gives the analysis dictionary information to each word and also arranges these words for each paragraph. A modification relation analyzer 4 decides the modification relation between the paragraphs of the Japanese appositive noun phrases. Then a noun phrase analyzer 5 and an appositive structure analyzer 6 decide the syntactic appositive conditions of the Japanese appositive noun phrase and produces a Japanese noun phrase appositive structure if the appositive relation is secured in terms of both syntactic and meaning senses. Finally a noun phrase converter 8 obtains an appositive noun phrase and an appositive modified proper noun translated into an object language of a Japanese appositive noun phrase structure 9 by reference to a Japanese-object language conversion dictionary 12 and obtains an appositive noun phrase 10 of the object language. Thus the Japanese appositive expressions can be translated after recognizing them as the correct appositive expressions not as the parallel expressions.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a Japanese automatic translation system, and in detail,
This paper relates to a method for translating input Japanese appositive noun phrases into target language appositive noun phrases.

[Prior art]

Conventional machine translation systems use 6 partial noun phrases + commas (,)
In Japanese noun phrases that appear to have a parallel structure, such as ``10 proper nouns'', the partial noun phrase that precedes the comma (this is called an ``appative modifier noun phrase'') is the proper noun that follows the comma (this Appositive expressions that explain or modify ``appositive modified proper nouns'' are also treated as mere parallel structures. In other words, it can only be recognized as a simple parallel structure.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

Therefore, for example, when assuming English as the target language, the translation is in the form of ``English translation of partial noun phrase + English translation of comma (1) or coordinating conjunction (and) ten proper nouns'', and the Japanese appositive expression is There was a problem that the meaning of the word was not accurately reflected in the target language.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and its purpose is to provide a Japanese appositive noun phrase translation method for correctly translating Japanese appositive noun phrases into target language appositive noun phrases. The above and other objects and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the description of this specification and the accompanying drawings.

[Means to solve the problem]

In order to achieve the above object, the Japanese appositive noun phrase translation method of the present invention uses a dictionary for Japanese language analysis in which word information is registered with each word constituting the Japanese appositive noun phrase to be translated as a heading. and a first processing means for dividing input Japanese appositive noun phrases into words using a Japanese language analysis dictionary and grouping the words into phrases; a second processing means for determining the dependency relationship between clauses of the Japanese appositive noun phrases grouped together; If so, then a third processing means that determines the semantic appositive condition and generates a Japanese appositive noun phrase structure when they are also semantically appositive, and a third processing means that generates a Japanese appositive noun phrase structure and a Japanese The most important feature is that it has a fourth processing means for obtaining a target language appositive noun phrase using a target language conversion dictionary.

[Effect]

According to the above-mentioned method, first, in word structure analysis, a Japanese appositive noun phrase is divided into words using a Japanese analysis dictionary, and analysis dictionary information is assigned to each word. I will summarize it in.

Next, in dependency analysis, the dependency relationships between clauses of one Japanese appositive noun phrase are determined.

Next, in noun phrase analysis and appositive structure analysis, the syntactic appositive conditions of Japanese appositive noun phrases are determined, and if they are syntactically appositive, then the semantic appositive conditions are determined, and the syntactically and semantically If there is also an appositive structure, create a Japanese noun phrase appositive structure.

Finally, in 1 noun phrase conversion, use the Japanese target language conversion dictionary to obtain the target language translations of the appositive modifier noun phrases and appositive modified proper nouns of the Japanese appositive noun phrase structure, and convert the appositive noun phrases in the target language. Configure.

By doing this, by considering the syntactic and semantic features of Japanese appositive noun phrases, we can recognize and translate Japanese appositive expressions as correct appositive expressions, rather than mere parallel expressions. can do.

In other words, for Japanese noun phrases, the present invention requires the syntactic condition that the appositive modifier noun phrase and the appositive modified proper noun form a parallel structure via commas, and the meaning of the main noun of the appositive modification. To provide a Japanese appositive noun phrase translation method for correctly translating Japanese appositive noun phrases into target language appositive noun phrases by taking into account the semantic condition that a certain kind of inclusion relationship is established between categories. be able to.

[Embodiments of the invention]

Hereinafter, one embodiment of the present invention will be specifically described using the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an embodiment of the Japanese appositive noun phrase translation method of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 9 denotes a Japanese appositive noun phrase translation device (hereinafter referred to as this device) which is the main part of the present invention, including a word structure analysis device 29, a clause/word structure buffer 3. Dependency analyzer 49 Noun phrase analyzer 5゜Noun phrase structure buffer 7, Noun phrase conversion bag! It consists of 8.

The noun phrase analysis device 5 further includes an appositive analysis device 6. 1 is a Japanese noun phrase that is input to this device 9, and 10 is a target language noun phrase that is output from this device 9. 11 is a dictionary for Japanese analysis, and 12 is a dictionary for converting the Japanese target language.

Japanese noun phrase 1, which is input to the Japanese appositive noun phrase translation device 9, is a noun phrase included in the Japanese sentence to be translated, and is divided into phrases <1> to <n> as shown in FIG. Consists of. Furthermore, each clause <i> is composed of words <11> to words kui,>.

Here, l ” 1 g @ @ II y n. The word 〈i,〉 is ``common noun''``'proper noun IT
, jJ prefix ``suffix'', ``case particle'', 4 clauses unmarked'', etc.Here, 1.) = 1.--,, oma.

Here, the method for cutting out Japanese noun phrases from the Japanese sentence to be translated is not particularly limited.

The word structure analysis device 2 analyzes Japanese noun phrases 1 written in solid form.
is divided into words using the Japanese language analysis dictionary 11, and then grouped into phrases, which are collections of words and serve as units of dependency analysis.

At this time, information necessary for subsequent analysis/conversion is taken from the Japanese language analysis dictionary 11 and given to each word. Then, the above results are stored in the clause/word structure buffer 3. Here, the method of implementing the word structure analysis device 2 is not particularly limited.

FIG. 3 shows an example of the clause/word structure buffer 3.

Next, in the dependency analysis device 4, the clause/structure buffer 3
The dependency relationship between the clauses is determined using the syntactic information of each word constituting the clause in the clause, and the dependency clause number of a certain clause and its dependency attribute are stored in the corresponding part of the clause/word structure buffer 3. Store in.

The syntactic information of a word defined here refers to information about the part of speech of the word and information about the order of appearance of the word within a clause, and does not include semantic information such as the semantic category of a noun. In addition, here, the method of implementing the dependency analysis device 4 is not particularly limited, but for example, "Japanese inter-clause dependency analysis method (Japanese Patent Application No. 52195/1983,
219069).

The noun phrase analysis device 5 performs three processes: assigning a noun function type to each phrase in the phrase/word structure buffer 3, calling the appositive analysis device 6, and structuring noun phrases that are not appositive expressions. The overall processing flow of this noun phrase analysis device 5 is shown in FIG.

As shown in FIG. 4, the noun phrase analysis device 5 first calculates, for each clause constituting a Japanese noun phrase, when the independent part of the clause is a one-word noun or a noun compound word.
The noun function type of the clause is determined (401). Here, what is the noun function type?

It expresses the function of a clause whose independent part is a noun (compound word) in a noun phrase. These include "noun", hexatemporal "pa-numeral", etc. This is determined using information on the part of speech and semantic category of the constituent words of the phrase.

Then, the noun function type determined here is stored at the corresponding location in the clause/word structure buffer 3.

The noun phrase analyzer 5 first activates the appositive analyzer 6.

The appositive analysis device 6 determines whether the Japanese noun phrases in the clause/word structure buffer 3 are appositive expressions, both in terms of the syntactic structure of the dependency analysis results and the semantic structure of the test results of the device 9. Test whether or not.

If it is determined that the structure is not an appositive structure, the appositive analysis device 6 ends the process and returns to the noun phrase analysis device 5.

When it is determined that they are appositive both syntactically and semantically, the noun phrase in the clause/word structure buffer 3 is structured as an appositive expression (402).

Next, it is checked whether the input Japanese noun phrase is structured as an appositive expression (403), and if it is structured as an appositive expression (YES), the process is terminated and the noun phrase analysis is performed. Returning to the device 5, if the Japanese noun phrase is not structured as an appositive expression (No), the Japanese noun phrase that is not an appositive expression is structured and stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7 (404), the process is ended, and the noun phrase analysis device 5 Return to

The appositive analysis device! ! The overall processing flow of step 6 is shown in FIG.

In the first step (501), it is determined whether the input Japanese noun phrase 1 is syntactically appositive.

Here, syntactically appositive means that Japanese noun phrase 1 is syntactically equivalent to 2.
It is composed of the above clauses (in this case, the total number of clauses is 'n''), and the clause <n -1> and the clause <
If a "parallel" dependency relationship is established between n>, and the adjunct of bunsetsu (n-1) is a comma (,), and n is 3 or more, then from bunsetsu ku1> No dependency relationship is established between any of the clauses in clause (n-2) and clause <n>, and the clauses from clause <1> to clause <n-2) are dependent on clause <n-1>. This is when the receiving attribute is other than "parallel".

FIG. 6 shows examples of Japanese noun phrases that are syntactically appositive under the above conditions, and FIG. 7 shows examples that are not syntactically appositive.

In the following explanation, it l 71 is a word boundary, 11
1 j) is a bunsetsu boundary.

When it is determined in the first step (501) that the Japanese noun phrase 1 is syntactically appositive (YES), the process proceeds to the second step (502), where it is determined that the Japanese noun phrase 1 is not syntactically appositive. If so, the process returns to step 403 in FIG.

In the second step (502), it is determined whether the Japanese noun phrases determined to be syntactically appositive in the first step (501) are semantically appositive.

Here, being semantically appositive means that the noun function type of the clause (n - 1) is ``general noun'', and the clause <n
> is a proper noun, and either condition 1 or 2.3 of the semantic inclusion relationship between clause <n> and clause <n-1> shown in FIG. 8 is satisfied.

The main noun in FIG. 8 is a noun that represents the meaning of the entire clause. In addition, in FIG. 8, a certain meaning category α is included in another meaning category β, which means that in the tree structure of FIG.
This is when α is included in the part of the tree structure whose root is β.

Examples of Japanese noun phrases that are semantically appositive according to the above conditions are shown in Figure 10, and examples that are not semantically appositive are shown in Figure 1.
Shown in Figure 1.

When it is determined that Japanese noun phrase 1 is semantically appositive (YES), the process proceeds to the third step (503), and when it is determined that it is syntactically not appositive (No), the process proceeds to the third step (503), as shown in Figure 4. Return to step 403.

In the third step (503), the first. Japanese noun phrases determined to be syntactically and semantically appositive in the second stage 1
is structured as an appositive expression and stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7. Here, the structuring method is not particularly limited, but the noun phrase conversion device! In step 8, it is only necessary to determine that the noun phrase stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7 is an appositive expression, and to identify the appositive modified noun phrase and the appositive modified proper noun. Note that, at this time, if a noun compound word exists as an element constituting the appositive expression, structuring processing of the compound word is also performed at the same time. Here, this method is not particularly limited, but for example, "Japanese noun compound word translation method in Japanese automatic translation system (Japanese Patent Application No. 1-27247, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2-206869)" by the same inventor. It may depend on

Returning to step 403 in FIG. 4, the noun phrase analyzer 5 determines that if the Japanese noun phrase in the clause/word structure buffer 3 is not structured as an appositive expression in the appositive analyzer 6, it is not an appositive expression. It is structured as a noun phrase and stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7. Here, the method for structuring noun phrases that are not appositive expressions is not particularly limited, but for example, the same inventor's ``Natural Language Noun Phrase Analysis Method''
066 Publication)".

Through the processing up to this point, the Japanese noun phrases in the clause/word structure buffer 3 are structured as Japanese noun phrases, regardless of whether they are appositive expressions, and the structure is stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7. ing.

The noun phrase conversion device 8 converts the Japanese noun phrases in the noun phrase structure buffer 7 using the Japanese target language conversion dictionary 12. At this time, the appositive expression is converted into a form that matches the noun phrase appositive expression in the target language. for example,
When English is selected as the target language, each of the appositive modifying noun phrase and appositive modified proper noun of the Japanese noun phrase is converted, and they are translated into ``English translation of the appositive modified proper noun'' and ``English translation of the appositive modified noun phrase''. Arrange in the order of English translation #+ 11 #j. Note that here, there are no particular limitations on the conversion of noun phrases that are not appositive expressions, and the conversion of noun compounds that are appositive modifier noun phrases. In this way, noun phrase conversion The device 8 outputs a target language noun phrase 10.

FIG. 12 is a record configuration diagram of the Japanese language analysis dictionary 11. 13 is a record of a dictionary for Japanese analysis. 14
is a word notation, and this word notation 14 is a key when searching the Japanese analysis dictionary. 15 is the part of speech of the word of word notation 14. 16 is the meaning category of the word of word notation 14.

17 is information for analysis of the word itself of the word notation 14.

FIG. 13 is a record configuration diagram of the Japanese target language conversion dictionary 12. 18 is a record of a dictionary for Japanese target language conversion. Reference numeral 19 indicates a word notation of a Japanese word, and this word notation 19 is a key when searching the Japanese target language conversion dictionary 12.

20 is a translation of word notation 19 in the target language. 2
1 is conversion information between the word notation 19 and the translated word 20.

Below, as an example of Japanese noun phrase 1, "Software company 1,
An example of operation when "NTT Software" is input and English is selected as the target language is shown below.

This Japanese noun phrase is an example of a Japanese noun phrase that is recognized to be appositive both syntactically and semantically.

First, for this Japanese noun phrase, the word structure analysis device 2
is applied, and the result is stored in the clause/word structure buffer 3.

Next, the dependency analysis device 4 operates on the result and stores the result in the clause/word structure buffer 3. The contents of the clause/word structure buffer 4 at this point are shown in FIG.

At the initial stage of the noun phrase analysis device 5, the noun function type is determined, and the result is reflected in the clause/word structure buffer 3. The contents of the clause/word structure buffer 3 at this time are the 15th
As shown in the figure.

Next, the appositive analysis device 6 is activated, and as described above (as shown in FIG. 5), as a first step, it is determined whether or not the words are syntactically appositive. As shown in Figure 6, this example is syntactically appositive. Aptitude analysis! 6, as a second step, it is determined whether they are semantically appositive. As shown in No. 101i1, this example is also semantically equivalent. As mentioned above, this example is syntactically and semantically appositive, so in the third step, it is structured as an appositive expression and stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7. The contents are shown in Fig. 16.

Since the input noun phrase has already been structured as an appositive expression and stored in the noun phrase structure buffer 7, the noun phrase analysis device 5 ends its processing.

The noun phrase conversion device i8 uses this structure, which is an appositive expression, and the information in the Japanese target language conversion dictionary 12, and converts the target language noun phrase 10 into “NTT Software Corp.
ration, a software company
y,''. However, the second comma in the target language noun phrase 10 is added only when this noun phrase appears in a sentence other than at the end of a sentence, and when the noun phrase alone is translated, or , is not added when it appears at the end of a sentence.

The present invention has been specifically described above based on examples, but 1.
It goes without saying that the present invention is not limited to the embodiments described above, and can be modified in various ways without departing from the spirit thereof.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, according to the present invention, when an input Japanese appositive noun phrase is translated into a target language appositive noun phrase in a Japanese automatic translation system, its syntactic characteristics and semantic characteristics are By taking this into account, it is possible to recognize and translate Japanese appositive expressions as correct appositive expressions, rather than mere parallel expressions.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of an embodiment of the Japanese appositive noun phrase translation method of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the general structure of phrases and words that make up a Japanese noun phrase. Fig. 3 is a block diagram of the phrase/word structure buffer, Fig. 4 is a diagram showing the processing flow of the noun phrase analysis device, Fig. 5 is a diagram showing the processing flow of the apposition analysis device, and Fig. 6 is a diagram showing the processing flow of the apposition analysis device. is a diagram showing examples of Japanese noun phrases that are syntactically appositive. FIG. 7 is a diagram showing examples of Japanese noun phrases that are not syntactically appositive. Figure 8 is a diagram showing the conditions for the semantic inclusion relationship between clause <n> and clause (n-1), Figure 9 is a diagram showing an example of a semantic category system, and Figure 10 is a diagram showing semantic apposition. Figure 11 is a diagram showing examples of Japanese noun phrases that are not semantically appositive. Figure 12 is a record configuration diagram of the Tamoto language analysis dictionary. Figure 13 is a record configuration diagram of a dictionary for Japanese target language conversion, and Figures 14 to 16 are diagrams showing an example of operation when "software company, NTT Software" is input as a Japanese noun phrase. . In the figure, 1... Japanese noun phrase, 2... Word structure analyzer, 3... Bunsetsu/word structure buffer, 4... Dependency analyzer, 5... Noun phrase analyzer, 6 ... Appositive analysis device, 7. Noun phrase structure buffer, 8. Noun phrase conversion device, 9. Japanese appositive noun phrase translation device, 10.
...Target language noun phrase, 11...Dictionary for Japanese analysis, 1
2... Dictionary for Japanese language conversion.

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) A method of translating input Japanese appositive noun phrases into target language appositive noun phrases in a Japanese automatic translation system, in which each word constituting the Japanese appositive noun phrase to be translated is used as a heading. Divide the input Japanese appositive noun phrases into words using the Japanese analysis dictionary and Japanese target language conversion dictionary in which information is registered, and the Japanese analysis dictionary, and summarize them into phrases. a first processing means for determining the dependency relationship between clauses of the input Japanese appositive noun phrase; and a second processing means for determining the syntactic appositive condition of the input Japanese appositive noun phrase, When it is apposed to
Next, the semantic appositive condition is determined, and when the semantic apposition is also found, a third processing means generates a Japanese appositive noun phrase structure, and a third processing means for converting the generated Japanese appositive noun phrase structure and the Japanese target language. A Japanese appositive noun phrase translation method characterized by having a fourth processing means for obtaining a target language appositive noun phrase using a dictionary.