PLUTO : a preprocessor for multilingual spoken language generation

Abstract

Surface realization, a subtask of natural language generation, maps a meaning representation to a natural language string. This thesis presents an architecture for a surface realization component in a spoken dialogue system. The architecture divides the surface realization task in two: (1) modification of the meaning representation to adhere to the constraints of the target language, and (2) string production. Each subtask is handled by a separate module. PLUTO is a new module, responsible for meaning representation modification, that has been added to the Spoken Language Systems group's surface realization component. PLUTO acts as a preprocessor to the main processor, GENESIS, which is responsible for string production. We show how this new, decoupled architecture is amenable to a hybrid approach to machine translation that combines transfer and interlingua. We also present a policy for generation that specifies the roles of PLUTO, GENESIS, and the lexicon they share. This policy formalizes a way of writing robust, reusable grammars. The primary contribution of this work is to simplify the development of such grammars in multilingual speech-based applications.