Papers by Albert Gatt
Abstract. Many real-world applications that reason about events obtained from raw data must deal ... more Abstract. Many real-world applications that reason about events obtained from raw data must deal with the problem of temporal uncertainty, which arises due to error or inaccuracy in data. Uncertainty also compromises reasoning where relationships between events need to be inferred.
Abstract A substantial amount of recent work in natural language generation has focused on the ge... more Abstract A substantial amount of recent work in natural language generation has focused on the generation of ''one-shot''referring expressions whose only aim is to identify a target referent. Dale and Reiter's Incremental Algorithm (IA) is often thought to be the best algorithm for maximizing the similarity to referring expressions produced by people. We test this hypothesis by eliciting referring expressions from human subjects and computing the similarity between the expressions elicited and the ones generated by algorithms.
Welcome to the Seventh International Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG 2012). INLG 201... more Welcome to the Seventh International Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG 2012). INLG 2012 is the biennial meeting of the ACL Special Interest Group on Natural Language Generation (SIGGEN). The INLG conference provides the premier forum for the discussion, dissemination, and archiving of research and results in the field of Natural Language Generation. Previous INLG conferences have been held in Ireland, the USA, Australia, the UK and Israel.
We are pleased to introduce the technical program of the Fifth International Natural Language Gen... more We are pleased to introduce the technical program of the Fifth International Natural Language Generation Conference (INLG 2008), the Biennial Meeting of SIGGEN, the ACL Special Interest Group in Natural Language Generation. INLG is the leading international conference on research into natural language generation. It has been held in Sydney (Australia) in 2006, at Brockenhurst (UK) in 2004, in Harriman (New York, USA) in 2002, and in Mitzpe Ramon (Israel) in 2000.
Abstract This paper discusses the ongoing development of a new Maltese spell checker, highlightin... more Abstract This paper discusses the ongoing development of a new Maltese spell checker, highlighting the methodologies which would best suit such a language. We thus discuss several previous attempts, highlighting what we believe to be their weakest point: a lack of attention to context. Two developments are of particular interest, both of which concern the availability of language resources relevant to spellchecking:(i) the Maltese Language Resource Server (MLRS) which now includes a representative corpus of c.
Abstract This paper explores the role of semantic similarity in content selection and aggregation... more Abstract This paper explores the role of semantic similarity in content selection and aggregation of expressions referring to sets. Similarity plays a role in ensuring that a referring expression corresponds to a coherent conceptual gestalt. On the basis of corpusbased and experimental evidence we propose an algorithm which (a) separates content selection and aggregation to avoid a combinatorial explosion;(b) uses similarity between entities to prioritise among search alternatives.
Abstract In referring to a target referent, speakers need to choose a set of properties that join... more Abstract In referring to a target referent, speakers need to choose a set of properties that jointly distinguish it from its distractors. Current computational models view this as a search process in which the decision to include a property requires checking how many distractors it excludes. Thus, these models predict that identifying descriptions should take longer to produce the larger the distractor set is, independent of how many properties are required to identify a target.
Abstract Evaluations of NLG systems generally are quantiative, that is, based on corpus compariso... more Abstract Evaluations of NLG systems generally are quantiative, that is, based on corpus comparison statistics and/or results of experiments with people. Outcomes of such evaluations are important in demonstrating whether or not an NLG system is successful, but leave gaps in understanding why this is the case. Alternatively, qualitative evaluations carried out by experts provide knowledge on where a system needs to be improved.
User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, Jan 1, 2006
Reference production and generation by Albert Gatt
Maltese noun phrases exhibit a form of 'definiteness agreement' between head noun and modifier. W... more Maltese noun phrases exhibit a form of 'definiteness agreement' between head noun and modifier. When the noun is definite, an adjectival modifier is often overtly marked as definite as well. However, the status of this phenomenon as a case of true morphosyntactic agreement has been disputed, given its apparent optionality. Not all definite nps have modifiers which are overtly marked as definite. Some authors have argued that definiteness marking on the adjective is in fact pragmatically licensed. The present paper presents a corpus-based study of the distribution of adjectives with and without definite marking, and then tests the pragmatic licensing claim through a production study. Speakers were found to be more likely to use definite adjectives in referential noun phrases when the adjectives had a specifically contrastive function. This result is discussed in the context of both theoretical and psycholinguistic work on the pragmatics of referentiality.
Proceedings of ACL-08: HLT, Short Papers, Jan 1, 2008
Proceedings of the Fifth International Natural …, Jan 1, 2008
Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, Jan 1, 2007
What constitutes an adequate reference to a set of objects? Despite intensive research on the Gen... more What constitutes an adequate reference to a set of objects? Despite intensive research on the Generation of Referring Expressions (gre), many gre algorithms either lack empirical backing, or are motivated by concerns which arguably shift their focus away from the crucial problem, which is to generate natural descriptions, much as a person would generate them in a comparable situation. This problem becomes much more pronounced in the case of plural reference, where even psycholinguistic research is lacking. This thesis focuses on ...
Journal of Logic, Language and Information, Jan 1, 2007
Proceedings of the pre- …, Jan 1, 2009
Empirical methods in natural language …, Jan 1, 2011
Proceedings of the COLING/ACL on Main …, Jan 1, 2006
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Papers by Albert Gatt
Reference production and generation by Albert Gatt