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Paraphrasing as an Optimisation Problem
Mark Dras
MRI Language Technology Group, Macquarie University
When: Tuesday 1st April,1997
Time: 11:30am
Where: Room E6A357, Macquarie University
Abstract:
Imagine the writing of a paper: you've written nine elegant, well-formed pages which convey every nuance you want and every concept you're trying to get across; but the conference you're submitting to has an eight page limit, and moreover the paper is going to be part of some technical documentation, which house style requires to have a certain "readability" level.
This talk develops a model of paraphrase under which text modification is carried out reluctantly; that is, there are external constraints on the text, such as length or readability, and modifications to the text are necessary to ensure that it conforms to constraints. This problem is analogous to a mathematical optimisation problem: there are constraints on a system (the textual constraints), and there is a function to be minimised (the extent of textual modification).
The work is done as part of a computational paraphrase system using the XTAG system as a base. The talk will thus present a theoretical computational framework for working within the Reluctant Paraphrase paradigm: three types of textual constraints are covered, effects of paraphrase on text are described, and a model incorporating mathematical optimisation techniques is specified.
Enquiries: sals@mri.mq.edu.au
| Last modified: July 1997 |