Abstract: The present invention can be used to calculate expected precision for association values between types of items in one class with types of items in another class. The present invention accommodates rare events.

Abstract: Dependency grammars are transformed to context-free grammars. The context-free grammars can be used in a parser to parse input sentences and identify relationships among words in the sentence.

Abstract: A method of estimating translation probabilities includes converting a set of word alignment scores into translation probabilities and modifying the translation probabilities based on a bilingual corpus to produce modified translation probabilities. Under many embodiments, the translation probabilities are modified using an iterative training algorithm.

Abstract: In a machine translation system, possible phrase pairs are extracted from a word-aligned corpus for inclusion in a phrase translation table. Feature values associated with the phrase pairs are calculated and translation model parameters for use in a decoder are trained. The translation model parameters are then used to re-extract a subset of phrase pairs from the original set of extracted phrase pairs. The feature values associated with the subset of phrase pairs are recalculated, and the translation model parameters are re-optimized based on the newly extracted subset of phrase pairs and the feature values associated with those phrase pairs.

Abstract: A parallel bilingual training corpus is parsed into its content words. Word association scores for each pair of content words consisting of a word of language L1 that occurs in a sentence aligned in the bilingual corpus to a sentence of language L2 in which the other word occurs. A pair of words is considered “linked” in a pair of aligned sentences if one of the words is the most highly associated, of all the words in its sentence, with the other word. The occurrence of compounds is hypothesized in the training data by identifying maximal, connected sets of linked words in each pair of aligned sentences in the processed and scored training data. Whenever one of these maximal, connected sets contains more than one word in either or both of the languages, the subset of the words in that language is hypothesized as a compound.

Abstract: A method is provided for aligning sentences in a first corpus to sentences in a second corpus. The method includes applying a length-based alignment model to align sentence boundaries of a sentence in the first corpus with sentence boundaries of a sentence in the second corpus to form an aligned sentence pair. The aligned sentence pair is then used to train a translation model. Once trained, the translation model is used to align sentences in the first corpus to sentences in the second corpus. Under aspects of the invention, pruning is used to reduce the number of sentence boundary alignments considered by the length-based alignment model and by the translation model. In further aspects of the invention, the length-based model utilizes a Poisson distribution.

Abstract: The present invention is a tree ordering component within a sentence realization system which receives an unordered syntax tree and generates a ranked list of alternative ordered syntax trees from the unordered syntax tree. The present invention also includes statistical models of constituent structure employed by the tree ordering component in scoring the alternative ordered trees.

Abstract: A method is provided for identifying phrase alignment pairs between a source sentence and a target sentence. Boundaries for a phrase in the source sentence are identified by requiring that a source word be aligned with at least one target word in a target sentence in order to form a boundary for the source phrase. Boundaries for a phrase in the target sentence are identified based on alignments between words in the source phrase and words in the target sentence. The words in the target phrase are examined to determine if any of the words are aligned with source words outside of the source phrase. If they are not aligned with source words outside of the source phrase, the source phrase and target phrase are determined to form an alignment pair and are stored as a phrase alignment pair.

Abstract: Different embodiments of the present invention provide improvements to left-corner chart parsing. The improvements include a specific order of filtering checks, transforming the grammar using bottom-up prefix merging, indexing productions first based on input symbols, grammar flattening, and annotating chart edges for the extraction of parses.

Abstract: The present invention provides an interactive system for controlling seismic data acquisition. A central controller controls seismic sources, detectors and receivers. A user/operator is provided one or more views of the operational components over a graphical user interface and is provided software to change parameters associated with the components. A second controller might be located in a seismic source vehicle. There exists two-way data and audio communication between the two controllers for providing dual control of the system. A field operator, relays information to and receives information from the central operator and controller. Together, the operators make decisions for selecting and operating system components.

Abstract: The present invention learns phrase translation relationships by receiving a parallel aligned corpus with phrases to be learned identified in a source language. Candidate phrases in a target language are generated and an inside score is calculated based on word association scores for words inside the source language phrase and candidate phrase. An outside score is calculated based on word association scores for words outside the source language phrase and candidate phrase. The inside and outside scores are combined to obtain a joint score.

Abstract: Methods for removing arsenic from water by addition of inexpensive and commonly available magnesium oxide, magnesium hydroxide, calcium oxide, or calcium hydroxide to the water. The hydroxide has a strong chemical affinity for arsenic and rapidly adsorbs arsenic, even in the presence of carbonate in the water. Simple and commercially available mechanical methods for removal of magnesium hydroxide particles with adsorbed arsenic from drinking water can be used, including filtration, dissolved air flotation, vortex separation, or centrifugal separation. A method for continuous removal of arsenic from water is provided. Also provided is a method for concentrating arsenic in a water sample to facilitate quantification of arsenic, by means of magnesium or calcium hydroxide adsorption.

Abstract: Different embodiments of the present invention provide improvements to left-corner chart parsing. The improvements include a specific order of filtering checks, transforming the grammar using bottom-up prefix merging, indexing productions first based on input symbols, grammar flattening, and annotating chart edges for the extraction of parses.

Abstract: A method and computer-readable medium determine word association scores for word pairs. Each word association score is converted into a translation probability using a normalization value that reserves probability mass for unseen data.

Abstract: A machine translation system is trained to generate confidence scores indicative of a quality of a translation result. A source string is translated with a machine translator to generate a target string. Features indicative of translation operations performed are extracted from the machine translator. A trusted entity-assigned translation score is obtained and is indicative of a trusted entity-assigned translation quality of the translated string. A relationship between a subset of the extracted features and the trusted entity-assigned translation score is identified.

Abstract: A method of iteratively re-estimating translation probabilities using smoothing. In the method, initial values for the translation probabilities are determined. The values of the translation probabilities are then iteratively re-estimated while using a smoothing technique.

Abstract: A parallel bilingual training corpus is parsed into its content words. Word association scores for each pair of content words consisting of a word of language L1 that occurs in a sentence aligned in the bilingual corpus to a sentence of language L2 in which the other word occurs. A pair of words is considered “linked” in a pair of aligned sentences if one of the words is the most highly associated, of all the words in its sentence, with the other word. The occurrence of compounds is hypothesized in the training data by identifying maximal, connected sets of linked words in each pair of aligned sentences in the processed and scored training data. Whenever one of these maximal, connected sets contains more than one word in either or both of the languages, the subset of the words in that language is hypothesized as a compound.

Abstract: The present invention is a method and system for identifying or realizing an output sequence using a grammar that can be used to encode semantic representation of the output. A goal incorporating a semantic representation is obtained and rules in the grammar are identified as having semantic representation components that can be matched with semantic representation components of the goal or portions thereof. The output sequence is realized based on the rules identified.

Abstract: A method of iteratively re-estimating translation probabilities using smoothing. In the method, initial values for the translation probabilities are determined. The values of the translation probabilities are then iteratively re-estimated while using a smoothing technique.

Abstract: Different embodiments of the present invention provide improvements to left-corner chart parsing. The improvements include a specific order of filtering checks, transforming the grammar using bottom-up prefix merging, indexing productions first based on input symbols, grammar flattening, and annotating chart edges for the extraction of parses.