Báo cáo khoa học: Contextual Analysis

Ambiguity, both syntactic and semantic, a problem that arises in the translation of Russian to English because of polysemantic forms in Russian, can be resolved by an analysis of the context in which the polysemantic form occurs.
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Báo cáo khoa học: "Contextual Analysis" [Mechanical Translation, vol.4, no.3, December 1957; pp. 70-75]Contextual AnalysisKenneth E. Harper, University of California, Los Angeles, California Ambiguity, both syntactic and semantic, a problem that arises in the translation of Russian to English because of polysemantic forms in Russian, can be resolved by an analysis of the context in which the polysemantic form occurs. This requires a systematic study of context so that word classes which determine the value of am- biguous forms can be established. confronting the reader by the mechanical selec-IN THE VARIOUS PROPOSALS for word-for- tion of the proper (or actual) syntactical andword machine translation of Russian scientific semantic equivalent from the various potentialliterature into English, each word in the sen- equivalents. Obviously, the solution can betence is considered as a separate entity. If a attempted along lines as infinitely complex asword has more than one English equivalent, or those involved in human translation, in whichmore than one possible syntactic value, the al- judgments are based on context, experienceternatives must be listed. The chief difficulty and even upon taste. Of these the element ofw ith the resulting translation is its prolixity: context is, to some degree, determinable byt he reader finds himself confronted with nu- mechanical means. In its general sense, con-merous alternatives, both syntactic and seman- text signifies environment, i.e., surroundingtic, in every sentence. The extent of the prob- words in a sentence, surrounding sentenceslem of ambiguity is suggested by the following and paragraphs, extending to the broad cate-figures: from a sample Russian scientific text, gory of subject areas. The question arises:43% of the running words were found to be poly- Is some more limited use of context analysissemantic (this in addition to syntactic ambigu- possible in MT, and how effective is such anal-ities which the reader must solve on the basis ysis in the removal of ambiguity?o f numerous alternatives given him in everysentence). In an attempt to answer this question, the potentialities of a contextual analysis of Сontext each ambiguous word (syntactically or seman- The difficulty with word-for-word translation, tically ambiguous) have been studied, sucht hen, is that it is really words-for-word analysis to be limited to immediately contiguoustranslation. 1 The solution to the problem words. Thus, for a given ambiguous word (x),lies in the reduction of the number of choices reference may be made to the preceding word (x-1) or to the following word (x+1). (In speci- fied instances, reference may be made to words which are separated by neutral words from1. The problem of word order is not critical (x) word.)i n MT, particularly for technical material. The value of this limited contextual analysisEven in the general literary language, the word was suggested by the inflectional nature of theo rder, subject-verb-direct object, is preserved Russian language. For example, the Englishi n 85 - 90% of all sentences (according to a preposition, of, indicating possession, doesstudy of 5000 pages of Russian prose text, not have a word equivalent in Russian; thecited in Voprosy grammaticheskogo stroya, of ...