Machine translation is a central aspect of research in artifical intelligence. This book is written in the context of the Machine Translation (MT) project EUROTRA, a multi-lingual MT-project putting special emphasis on the definition of semantic representation. The linguistic design of the system is stratificational insofar as the processes of analysis and synthesis consist of the translation between several linguistically motivated levels. Of these a configurational structure, a syntactic dependency structure, and a functional semantic structure are discussed in this book. The issues raised include syntax, semantics, analysis and generation, and lexical transfer, and the ideas discussed are relevant for any analysis of multilingual machine translation. The authors report on the theoretical definitions, on the implementations of linguistic levels, as well as on tools that have been developed by EUROTRA-D.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction Johann Haller, Paul Schmidt, Erich Steiner, Elke Teich and Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt   1 1.1 Organization: EUROTRA-D and subsidiary research  2 1.2 The concept of linguistic levels 3  1.3 Rule formalism and syntax  3 1.4 The EUROTRA Interface Structure  4 1.5 Problems and proposals  6 Part I: A coherent system-theory and implementation  11 2. A syntactic description of a fragment of German in the EUROTRA framework Paul Schmidt  11 2.0 Introduction  11 2.1 The representational language  11 2.2 Configurational structures (ECS)  17 2.3 Relational structure (ERS)  25 2.4 The relation between constituency and dependency  37 2.5 Summary  39 3. The development of the EUROTRA-D system of Semantic Relations Erich Steiner, Ursula Eckert, Birgit Roth and Jutta Winter-Thielen  40 3.0 Introduction  40 3.1 A procedure for assigning semantic structures to clauses  47 3.2 Appli'cation to German  52 3.3 Problems and solutions  64 3.4 Stability and extensibility of the system  81 Appendix I  84 Appendix II  93 Appendix III  102 4. From cognitive grammar to the generation of semantic interpretation in machine translation Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt  105 4.0 Introduction  105 4.1 The principles of linguistic semantics  105 4.2 The entity grammar  121 4.3 The application of the formalism  122 4.4 Implementation of the , T formalism  124 Appendix  129 Part II: Semantic Relations in an MT environment  133 5. Semantic Relations in LFG and in EUROTRA-D: a comparison Erich Steiner  133 5.0 Introduction  133 5.1 On the independence of predicate-argument structure from representations of syntactic context  134 5.2 Polyadicity of predicates  136 5.3 Universal conditions on the assignment of grammatical functions  138 5.4 The treatment of variable polyadicity  145 5.5 Concluding remarks  147 6. Generating German from Semantic Relations: Semantic Relations as an input to the SEMSYN generator Ulrich Heid, Dictmar Rosner and Birgit Roth  149 6.0 Introduction  149 6.1 The basis of the experiment  149 6.2 Mapping participant roles on to syntactic functions  151 6.3 Summary  159 Part III: From source language to target language-aspects of transfer  161 7. Transfer strategies in EUROTRA-D Paul Schmidt  161 7.0 Introduction  161 7.1 Lexical transfer  161 7.2 Two remarks on semantic relations from a strategic point of view  168 7 .3 Examples for structural transfer  172 8. Semantic Relations in EUROTRA-D and syntactic functions in LFG: a comparison in the context of lexical transfer in machine translation Ursula Eckert and Ulrich Heid  178 8.0 Introduction  178 8.1 Course of the experiment  179 8.2 Results of the experiment  181 8.3 Discussion  184 8.4 Final Remarks 9. The transfer of quantifiers in a multilingual machine translation system Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt  187 9.0 Introduction  187 9.1 Conditions for the semantics of determiners  187 9.2 Implementation strategy  188 9.3 The semantic functions of determiners  188 9.4 The interaction of the 'count' /'mass' distinction with the expression of the entity's set properties  192 9.5 The organization of the semantic features of determination  206 9.6 The meaning of the semantic features  206 9.7 The featurization of determiners and quantifiers  212 9.8 Deictic determination  215 Part IV: Explorations  216 10. A constructive version of GPSG for machine translation Christa Hauettsclzild and Stephan Busemann  216 10.0 Introduction  216 10.1 The potential role of GPSG within an MT framework  217 10.2 The classical version of GPSG  219 10.3 GPSG from a constructive point of view  225 10.4 Prospects for further research: from syntax to semantics  236 11. LFG and the CAT-formalism Paul Schmidt  239 11.0 Introduction  239 11.1 Constructing a little grammar in LFG  239 11.2 The problem with free word order in German  245 11.3 Long-distance movement  248 11.4 Summary  250 Bibliography  251 Index  259