Lars Ahrenberg

Bio: Lars Ahrenberg is an academic researcher from Linköping University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Machine translation & Word (computer architecture). The author has an hindex of 16, co-authored 64 publications receiving 1545 citations.

Wizard of Oz studies: why and how

Abstract: Current approaches to the development of natural language dialogue systems are discussed, and it is claimed that they do not sufficiently consider the unique qualities of man-machine interaction as distinct from general human discourse. It is concluded that empirical studies of this unique communication situation are required for the development of user-friendly interactive systems. One way of achieving this is through the use of so-called Wizard of Oz studies. The focus of the work described in the paper is on the practical execution of the studies and the methodological conclusions drawn on the basis of the authors' experience. While the focus is on natural language interfaces, the methods used and the conclusions drawn from the results obtained are of relevance also to other kinds of intelligent interfaces.

A Simple Hybrid Aligner for Generating Lexical Correspondences in Parallel Texts

Abstract: We present an algorithm for bilingual word alignment that extends previous work by treating multi-word candidates on a par with single words, and combining some simple assumptions about the translation process to capture alignments for low frequency words. As most other alignment algorithms it uses cooccurrence statistics as a basis, but differs in the assumptions it makes about the translation process. The algorithm has been implemented in a modular system that allows the user to experiment with different combinations and variants of these assumptions. We give performance results from two evaluations, which compare will with results reported in the literature.

Evaluation of word alignment systems

Abstract: This project evaluates two different systems that generate wordalignments on English-Swedish data. The systems to be used are the Giza++ system, that may generate a variety of statistical translati ...

LinES: An English-Swedish Parallel Treebank

Abstract: This paper presents an English-Swedish Parallel Treebank, LinES, that is currently under development. LinES is intended as a resource for the study of variation in translation of common syntactic constructions from English to Swedish. For this reason, annotation in LinES is syntactically oriented, multi-level, complete and manually reviewed according to guidelines. Another aim of LinES is to support queries made in terms of types of translation shifts.

Improved statistical alignment models

Abstract: In this paper, we present and compare various single-word based alignment models for statistical machine translation. We discuss the five IBM alignment models, the Hidden-Markov alignment model, smoothing techniques and various modifications. We present different methods to combine alignments. As evaluation criterion we use the quality of the resulting Viterbi alignment compared to a manually produced reference alignment. We show that models with a first-order dependence and a fertility model lead to significantly better results than the simple models IBM-1 or IBM-2, which are not able to go beyond zero-order dependencies.

The Theory and Practice of Translation

Abstract: The recent collection of articles, The Art of Translation [Masterstvo perevoda], follows publication of two other books on the subject, The Problems of Translation of Creative Writing [Voprosy khudozhestvennogo perevoda] and another work also bearing the title The Art of Translation.

Socially intelligent robots: dimensions of human-robot interaction.

Abstract: Social intelligence in robots has a quite recent history in artificial intelligence and robotics. However, it has become increasingly apparent that social and interactive skills are necessary requirements in many application areas and contexts where robots need to interact and collaborate with other robots or humans. Research on human–robot interaction (HRI) poses many challenges regarding the nature of interactivity and ‘social behaviour’ in robot and humans. The first part of this paper addresses dimensions of HRI, discussing requirements on social skills for robots and introducing the conceptual space of HRI studies. In order to illustrate these concepts, two examples of HRI research are presented. First, research is surveyed which investigates the development of a cognitive robot companion. The aim of this work is to develop social rules for robot behaviour (a ‘robotiquette’) that is comfortable and acceptable to humans. Second, robots are discussed as possible educational or therapeutic toys for children with autism. The concept of interactive emergence in human–child interactions is highlighted. Different types of play among children are discussed in the light of their potential investigation in human–robot experiments. The paper concludes by examining different paradigms regarding ‘social relationships’ of robots and people interacting with them.

The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason

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The Idiom Principle and the Open Choice Principle

Abstract: The assumptions forming the basis of this study are that the language user has available a number of more-or-less preconstructed phrases and that the production of texts involves alternation between word-for-word combinations—which we refer to as adherence to the open choice principle (after Sinclair 1991)—and preconstructed multi-word combinations, which we refer to as making use of the idiom principle (again after Sinclair). The main aim of the study is to gain an Impression ofthe impact that this alternation has on the structure of texts. Therefore a mode of analysis has been worked out revealing how multi-word combinations combine with each other and with words combined according to the open choice principle. This is the main contribution of the study. Another important contribution is the revelation that there is a large amount of prefabricated language in bot h spoken and written texts (on average around half of the texts), which makes it impossible to consider idioms and other multi-word combinations as marginal phenomena.