基于WordNet的英语隐喻自动处理研究
摘要
作为自然语言理解最棘手的问题之一,隐喻逐渐引起了学者们的关注。当前的篇章处理已经取得了较大的成就,但在准确性上仍然无法令人满意。句子是篇章的重要构成元素,对句子的处理是篇章处理的关键。对于常规的句型处理,目前的篇章处理技术已经基本上可以满足需求。然而,对篇章中的一些较为特殊的句子的理解,机器处理还存在较大问题,隐喻句的处理就属于这一类。隐喻问题若不能得到较好的解决,篇章理解的准确度便难以突破,一系列依赖于篇章理解准确度的技术比如自动文摘、机器翻译、信息检索等也难以取得令人满意的进展。
本文致力于隐喻的自动处理研究。我们从认知角度对隐喻的定义、分类和识别进行探讨,指出隐喻识别的主要标准——冲突。接着,以WordNet这个在线词典数据库系统里的各种语义知识和语义关系为基础,开发出一个处理“A is B”形式的英文隐喻自动处理系统。该系统主要包括对语句的预处理和隐喻语句的自动判别。系统对语句先进行预处理,包括分词和句法分析;并对主、表语进行知识搜索和语义计算(语义相似度),进而判别是否为隐喻。我们采用数据库管理系统的相关技术,使得隐喻理解处理时需要的知识可以很方便的在其中搜索,提高系统对隐喻处理的效率。最后,我们分别从Goatly创建的英语隐喻语料库Metalude和桂诗春创建的中国学习者英语语料库中选取大量隐喻和非隐喻的例子,对系统进行测试和评估,证实了该系统的合理性和可行性。
Metaphor has always been the focus of research. Since Lakoff and Johnson put forward the Conceptual Metaphor theory, more and more people have devoted themselves to metaphor studies from, the perspective of cognitive science. Metaphor is now no longer taken as a deviation from the regular language, which is merely a device of the figure of speech for decoration, but as a basic human thinking way or cognitive process. The scope of metaphor studies has been greatly extended, covering cognition, psychology, philosophy, pragmatics, semiotics, and Artificial Intelligence, etc. Natural Language Processing, which is a branch of Artificial Intelligence, plays an important role nowadays. Great achievements have been made on regular sentence processing, but other sentences including metaphorical sentences remain a bottleneck for Natural Language Processing. Automatic processing of metaphor, will pave the way for Automatic digest, Machine translation and Information Retrieval.
We endeavor to carry out a research in automatic processing of metaphor. Firstly, we explore the metaphor theories, including definition, classification and identification of metaphor. Based on WordNet, an on-line lexical reference system, we then design a metaphor automatic processing system which deals with the A is B pattern. The system consists of Sentence Parsing Module, Word Searching Module, Database Administration Module and Similarity Calculating Module. It analyzes the sentence, extracts the subject and predicate, calculates their similarity and judges whether the sentence is a metaphor. We adopt Java Database Connectivity to administrate database so that the system will work more efficiently. Both metaphorical and literal evidence is offered in this thesis to evaluate the system. A large number of metaphorical sentences are collected from the English metaphor corpus—Metalude. Literal sentences are mainly collected from the Chinese Learner English Corpus.
本文致力于隐喻的自动处理研究。我们从认知角度对隐喻的定义、分类和识别进行探讨,指出隐喻识别的主要标准——冲突。接着,以WordNet这个在线词典数据库系统里的各种语义知识和语义关系为基础,开发出一个处理“A is B”形式的英文隐喻自动处理系统。该系统主要包括对语句的预处理和隐喻语句的自动判别。系统对语句先进行预处理,包括分词和句法分析;并对主、表语进行知识搜索和语义计算(语义相似度),进而判别是否为隐喻。我们采用数据库管理系统的相关技术,使得隐喻理解处理时需要的知识可以很方便的在其中搜索,提高系统对隐喻处理的效率。最后,我们分别从Goatly创建的英语隐喻语料库Metalude和桂诗春创建的中国学习者英语语料库中选取大量隐喻和非隐喻的例子,对系统进行测试和评估,证实了该系统的合理性和可行性。
Metaphor has always been the focus of research. Since Lakoff and Johnson put forward the Conceptual Metaphor theory, more and more people have devoted themselves to metaphor studies from, the perspective of cognitive science. Metaphor is now no longer taken as a deviation from the regular language, which is merely a device of the figure of speech for decoration, but as a basic human thinking way or cognitive process. The scope of metaphor studies has been greatly extended, covering cognition, psychology, philosophy, pragmatics, semiotics, and Artificial Intelligence, etc. Natural Language Processing, which is a branch of Artificial Intelligence, plays an important role nowadays. Great achievements have been made on regular sentence processing, but other sentences including metaphorical sentences remain a bottleneck for Natural Language Processing. Automatic processing of metaphor, will pave the way for Automatic digest, Machine translation and Information Retrieval.
We endeavor to carry out a research in automatic processing of metaphor. Firstly, we explore the metaphor theories, including definition, classification and identification of metaphor. Based on WordNet, an on-line lexical reference system, we then design a metaphor automatic processing system which deals with the A is B pattern. The system consists of Sentence Parsing Module, Word Searching Module, Database Administration Module and Similarity Calculating Module. It analyzes the sentence, extracts the subject and predicate, calculates their similarity and judges whether the sentence is a metaphor. We adopt Java Database Connectivity to administrate database so that the system will work more efficiently. Both metaphorical and literal evidence is offered in this thesis to evaluate the system. A large number of metaphorical sentences are collected from the English metaphor corpus—Metalude. Literal sentences are mainly collected from the Chinese Learner English Corpus.
引文
Gui Shichun[桂诗春].2002.中国学习者英语语料库.上海:上海外语教育出版社
Li Ming[李明].2004.隐喻—词汇语义变化的重要方式.山东外语教学.5:43-47
Shu Dingfang[束定芳].2000b.隐喻学研究.上海:上海外语教育出版社.
Shu Dingfang[束定芳].2000a.论隐喻的基本类型及句法和语义特征.外国语.1
Xie Zhijun[谢之君].2000.隐喻:从修辞到认知.外语与外语教学.3:9-12
Yah Wei[颜伟]& Xun Endong[荀恩东].2004.基于WordNet的英语词语相似度计算[A].第二届全国学生计算语言学研讨会论文集[C]
Ahrens,K.2002.When Love is not Digested:Underlying Reasons for Source to Target Domain Pairing in the Contemporary Theory of Mataphor.In:Proceedings of the first Cognitive Linguistics Conference.Taipei
Aristotle.1457.Poetics.Edited and tranlated by Stephen Halliwell.Cambridge,Mass:Harvard University Press
Black,M.1962.Models and Metaphors.Ithaca,N.Y.:Cornell University Press
Boers,F.1999.When a Bodily Source Domain Becomes Prominent—The Joy of Counting Metaphors in the Socio-economic Domain.In Gibbs,Jr.,R.W.& Steen,G.J.(eds)Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics.Amsterdam & Philadelphia:John Benjamins Publishing Company
Cameron L.& Low,G.1999.Metaphor.Language Teaching,32(2):77-96
Cameron,L.2001.Identifying and describing metaphor in spoken,discourse data..In Cameron,L.& Low,G (Eds.).Researching and Applying Metaphor.:105-132.Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Cruse,D.A.1986.Lexical Semantics.New York:Cambridge University Press
Falkenhainer,B.Forbus,K.D.& Gentner,D.1989.The Structure-Mapping Engine:Algorithm and Examples.Artificial Intelligence.41:1-63
Fass,D.1991.Met~*:A Method for Discriminating Metonymy and Metaphor by Computer.Computational Linguistics.17:49-90
Fass,D & Wilks,Y.1983.Preference Semantics,Ill-Formedness,and Metaphor.American Journal of Computational Ling-uistics.9:178-187
Fellbaum,C.1998.WordNet:An Electronic Lexical Database.MIT Press.Cambridge.
Gentner,D.1983.Structure-Mapping:A Theoretical Framework for Analogy.Cognitive Science.7:155-170
Goatly,A.1997.The Language of Metaphor.London:Routledge.
Gross,D.,Kegl,J.,Gildea,P.& Miller,G.A.1989.A Coded Corpus and Commentary on Children's Dictionary Strategies.Princeton,N.J.:Cognitive Science Laboratory Report 39.
Holyoak,K.J.& Thagard,P.1989.Analogical Mapping by Constraint Satisfaction.Cognitive Science.13:295-355.In A.Ortony(ed.)Metaphor and Thought,New York:Cambridge University Press
Indurkhya,B.1992.Metaphor and Cognition:An Interactionist Approach.Dorcrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers
Katz,A.J.1996.On interpreting statements as metaphor or irony:contextual heuristics and cognitive consequences,in Mio,J.S.& Katz,A.J.(EDS.)
Kovecses,Z.2002.Metaphor:A Practical Introduction.Oxford:Oxford University Press
Lakoff,G.& Johnson,M.1980.Metaphors We Live By.Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press
Lakoff,G.1993.The contemporary theory of metaphor.In A.Ortony(ed.)Metaphor and Thought.New York:Cambridge University Press:203
Lakoff,G.1987.Women,fire,and dangerous things.Chicago:The University of Chicago Press
Lyons,J.1977.Semantics.2 vols.New York:Cambridge University Press
Mahon,J.E.2001.Getting your sources right:What Aristotle didn't say.In Cameron,L.& Low,G(Eds.),Researching and Applying Metaphor.Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press:69-80
Martin,J.H.1990.A Computational Model of Metaphor Interpretation.Boston:Academic Press.
Martin,J.H.2000.Representing UNIX Domain Metaphors.Artificial Intelligence Review.14:377-TP1
Miller,G.A.& Fellbaum,C.1991.Semantic Networks of English.Cognition.41:197-229.
Miller,G.A.& Gildea,P.M.1987.How Children Learn Words.Scientific American.257:No.3:94-99.
Miller,G.A.1986.Dictionaries in the Mind.Language and Cognitive Processes.1:171-185.
Miller,G.A.& Richard,B.et al.1993.Introduction to WordNet:An On-line Lexical Database.In Five Papers on WordNet,C LS report,Cognitive Science Laboratory,Princeton University
Ortony, A. (Ed.) 1979. Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press: 3
Reddy, M. J. The Conduit Metaphor: A case of Frame Conflict in our Language about Language. In A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press [1979]/1993.164-201.
Richards, I.A.1936.The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press
Richards, I.A.2001 .The Philosophy of Rhetoric (edited by Constable, J.).London & New York: Routledge.
Steen, G. & Gibbs, Jr., R.W.1999. Introduction. In Gibbs, Jr., R.W. & Steen, G.J.(eds) Metaphor in
Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Steinhart, E. C. 2001. The Logic of Metaphor[M] . Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Touretzky, D. S. 1986. The Mathematics of Inheritance Systems. Los Altos, Calif.:Morgan Kaufmann
Veale, T. & Keane, M.T. 1998. "Just in Time" Analogical Mapping, An Iteractive-Deepening Approach to Structure-Mapping. In the Preceedings of ECAI'98, the Thirteenthe European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Brighton
Veale, T, & Keane, M.T. 1997.The Competence of Sub-Optimal Structure Mapping on "Hard" Analogies. In the Proceedings of IJCAI'97, The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Nagoya, Japan
Veale, T. & Smyth, B. et al. 1996.Representational Myopia in Cognitive Mapping, in the Proceedings of the 1996 AAAI Workshop on Source of the Power. In Cognitive Theories. Oregon, Portland
Veale, T. & Way, A. 1997. Gaijin: A Template-Driven Bootstrapping Approach to Example-Based Machine Translation. In the Proceedings of NeMNLP'97, New Methods in Natural Language processing. Sofia, Bulgaria.
Veale, T. 1995.Metaphor, Memory and Meaning: Symbolic and Connectionist Issues in Metaphor Interpretation : [ PhD. Thesis ] .Dublin : Trinity College
Weiner, E. J. 1984. A Knowledge Representation Approach to Understanding Metaphors. Computational Linguistics. 10:1-14
Wilks, Y. 1975.A Preferential Pattern-seeking Semantics for Natural Language Inference. Artificial Intelligence. 6:53-74
J2EE,http://www.itisedu.com/phrase/200603091447335.html
Java Database Connectivity From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved Jan.16, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Database_Connectivity
WNSTATS(7WN) Manual page. Retrieved Feb.10, 2008, from: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/man/wnstats.7WN
Li Ming[李明].2004.隐喻—词汇语义变化的重要方式.山东外语教学.5:43-47
Shu Dingfang[束定芳].2000b.隐喻学研究.上海:上海外语教育出版社.
Shu Dingfang[束定芳].2000a.论隐喻的基本类型及句法和语义特征.外国语.1
Xie Zhijun[谢之君].2000.隐喻:从修辞到认知.外语与外语教学.3:9-12
Yah Wei[颜伟]& Xun Endong[荀恩东].2004.基于WordNet的英语词语相似度计算[A].第二届全国学生计算语言学研讨会论文集[C]
Ahrens,K.2002.When Love is not Digested:Underlying Reasons for Source to Target Domain Pairing in the Contemporary Theory of Mataphor.In:Proceedings of the first Cognitive Linguistics Conference.Taipei
Aristotle.1457.Poetics.Edited and tranlated by Stephen Halliwell.Cambridge,Mass:Harvard University Press
Black,M.1962.Models and Metaphors.Ithaca,N.Y.:Cornell University Press
Boers,F.1999.When a Bodily Source Domain Becomes Prominent—The Joy of Counting Metaphors in the Socio-economic Domain.In Gibbs,Jr.,R.W.& Steen,G.J.(eds)Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics.Amsterdam & Philadelphia:John Benjamins Publishing Company
Cameron L.& Low,G.1999.Metaphor.Language Teaching,32(2):77-96
Cameron,L.2001.Identifying and describing metaphor in spoken,discourse data..In Cameron,L.& Low,G (Eds.).Researching and Applying Metaphor.:105-132.Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Cruse,D.A.1986.Lexical Semantics.New York:Cambridge University Press
Falkenhainer,B.Forbus,K.D.& Gentner,D.1989.The Structure-Mapping Engine:Algorithm and Examples.Artificial Intelligence.41:1-63
Fass,D.1991.Met~*:A Method for Discriminating Metonymy and Metaphor by Computer.Computational Linguistics.17:49-90
Fass,D & Wilks,Y.1983.Preference Semantics,Ill-Formedness,and Metaphor.American Journal of Computational Ling-uistics.9:178-187
Fellbaum,C.1998.WordNet:An Electronic Lexical Database.MIT Press.Cambridge.
Gentner,D.1983.Structure-Mapping:A Theoretical Framework for Analogy.Cognitive Science.7:155-170
Goatly,A.1997.The Language of Metaphor.London:Routledge.
Gross,D.,Kegl,J.,Gildea,P.& Miller,G.A.1989.A Coded Corpus and Commentary on Children's Dictionary Strategies.Princeton,N.J.:Cognitive Science Laboratory Report 39.
Holyoak,K.J.& Thagard,P.1989.Analogical Mapping by Constraint Satisfaction.Cognitive Science.13:295-355.In A.Ortony(ed.)Metaphor and Thought,New York:Cambridge University Press
Indurkhya,B.1992.Metaphor and Cognition:An Interactionist Approach.Dorcrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers
Katz,A.J.1996.On interpreting statements as metaphor or irony:contextual heuristics and cognitive consequences,in Mio,J.S.& Katz,A.J.(EDS.)
Kovecses,Z.2002.Metaphor:A Practical Introduction.Oxford:Oxford University Press
Lakoff,G.& Johnson,M.1980.Metaphors We Live By.Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press
Lakoff,G.1993.The contemporary theory of metaphor.In A.Ortony(ed.)Metaphor and Thought.New York:Cambridge University Press:203
Lakoff,G.1987.Women,fire,and dangerous things.Chicago:The University of Chicago Press
Lyons,J.1977.Semantics.2 vols.New York:Cambridge University Press
Mahon,J.E.2001.Getting your sources right:What Aristotle didn't say.In Cameron,L.& Low,G(Eds.),Researching and Applying Metaphor.Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press:69-80
Martin,J.H.1990.A Computational Model of Metaphor Interpretation.Boston:Academic Press.
Martin,J.H.2000.Representing UNIX Domain Metaphors.Artificial Intelligence Review.14:377-TP1
Miller,G.A.& Fellbaum,C.1991.Semantic Networks of English.Cognition.41:197-229.
Miller,G.A.& Gildea,P.M.1987.How Children Learn Words.Scientific American.257:No.3:94-99.
Miller,G.A.1986.Dictionaries in the Mind.Language and Cognitive Processes.1:171-185.
Miller,G.A.& Richard,B.et al.1993.Introduction to WordNet:An On-line Lexical Database.In Five Papers on WordNet,C LS report,Cognitive Science Laboratory,Princeton University
Ortony, A. (Ed.) 1979. Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press: 3
Reddy, M. J. The Conduit Metaphor: A case of Frame Conflict in our Language about Language. In A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press [1979]/1993.164-201.
Richards, I.A.1936.The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press
Richards, I.A.2001 .The Philosophy of Rhetoric (edited by Constable, J.).London & New York: Routledge.
Steen, G. & Gibbs, Jr., R.W.1999. Introduction. In Gibbs, Jr., R.W. & Steen, G.J.(eds) Metaphor in
Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Steinhart, E. C. 2001. The Logic of Metaphor[M] . Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Touretzky, D. S. 1986. The Mathematics of Inheritance Systems. Los Altos, Calif.:Morgan Kaufmann
Veale, T. & Keane, M.T. 1998. "Just in Time" Analogical Mapping, An Iteractive-Deepening Approach to Structure-Mapping. In the Preceedings of ECAI'98, the Thirteenthe European Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Brighton
Veale, T, & Keane, M.T. 1997.The Competence of Sub-Optimal Structure Mapping on "Hard" Analogies. In the Proceedings of IJCAI'97, The International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Nagoya, Japan
Veale, T. & Smyth, B. et al. 1996.Representational Myopia in Cognitive Mapping, in the Proceedings of the 1996 AAAI Workshop on Source of the Power. In Cognitive Theories. Oregon, Portland
Veale, T. & Way, A. 1997. Gaijin: A Template-Driven Bootstrapping Approach to Example-Based Machine Translation. In the Proceedings of NeMNLP'97, New Methods in Natural Language processing. Sofia, Bulgaria.
Veale, T. 1995.Metaphor, Memory and Meaning: Symbolic and Connectionist Issues in Metaphor Interpretation : [ PhD. Thesis ] .Dublin : Trinity College
Weiner, E. J. 1984. A Knowledge Representation Approach to Understanding Metaphors. Computational Linguistics. 10:1-14
Wilks, Y. 1975.A Preferential Pattern-seeking Semantics for Natural Language Inference. Artificial Intelligence. 6:53-74
J2EE,http://www.itisedu.com/phrase/200603091447335.html
Java Database Connectivity From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved Jan.16, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Database_Connectivity
WNSTATS(7WN) Manual page. Retrieved Feb.10, 2008, from: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/man/wnstats.7WN