Using Logic in the Generation of Referring Expressions

C. Areces, S. Figueira, and D. Gor\'in. Using Logic in the Generation of Referring Expressions. In S. Pogodalla and J. Prost, editors, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics (LACL 2011), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 17–32, Springer, Montpelier, 2011.

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Abstract

The problem of generating referring expressions (GRE) is an important task in natural language generation. In this paper, we advocate for the use of logical languages in the output of the content determination phase (i.e., when the relevant features of the object to be referred are selected). Many difeerent logics can be used for this and we argue that, for a particular application, the actual choice shall constitute a compromise between expressive power (how many objects can be distinguished), computational complexity (how dificult it is to determine the content) and realizability (how often will the selected content be realized to an idiomatic expression). We show that well-known results from the area of computational logic can then be transferred to GRE. Moreover, our approach is orthogonal to previous proposals and we illustrate this by generalizing well-known content-determination algorithms to make them parametric on the logic employed.

BibTeX

@InCollection{Areces2011c,
  author =       "C. Areces and S. Figueira and D. Gor{\'i}n",
  booktitle =    "Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on
                 Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics (LACL
                 2011)",
  publisher =    "Springer",
  title =        "Using Logic in the Generation of Referring
                 Expressions",
  year =         "2011",
  address =      "Montpelier",
  editor =       "S. Pogodalla and J. Prost",
  pages =        "17--32",
  series =       "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",
  volume =       "6736",
  abstract =     "The problem of generating referring expressions (GRE)
                 is an important task in natural language generation. In
                 this paper, we advocate for the use of logical
                 languages in the output of the content determination
                 phase (i.e., when the relevant features of the object
                 to be referred are selected). Many difeerent logics can
                 be used for this and we argue that, for a particular
                 application, the actual choice shall constitute a
                 compromise between expressive power (how many objects
                 can be distinguished), computational complexity (how
                 dificult it is to determine the content) and
                 realizability (how often will the selected content be
                 realized to an idiomatic expression). We show that
                 well-known results from the area of computational logic
                 can then be transferred to GRE. Moreover, our approach
                 is orthogonal to previous proposals and we illustrate
                 this by generalizing well-known content-determination
                 algorithms to make them parametric on the logic
                 employed.",
  bibsource =    "DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de",
  ee =           "http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22221-4_2",
  ISBN =         "978-3-642-22220-7",
}