SEM-I Rational MT: Enriching Deep Grammars with a Semantic Interface for Scalable Machine Translation

Abstract

In the LOGON machine translation system where semantic transfer using Minimal Recursion Se-mantics is being developed in conjunction with two existing broad-coverage grammars of Nor-wegian and English, we motivate the use of a grammar-specific semantic interface (SEM-I) to facilitate the construction and maintenance of a scalable translation engine. The SEM-I is a the-oretically grounded component of each gram-mar, capturing several classes of lexical regular-ities while also serving the crucial engineering function of supplying a reliable and complete specification of the elementary predications the grammar can realize. We make extensive use of underspecification and type hierarchies to max-imize generality and precision. 1