Journal of Natural Language Processing
Online ISSN : 2185-8314
Print ISSN : 1340-7619
ISSN-L : 1340-7619
Automatic Paraphrasing of Japanese Functional Expressions under Style and Readability Specifications
SUGURU MATSUYOSHISATOSHI SATO
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2008 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 75-99

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Abstract
Automatic paraphrasing is a transformation of expressions into semantically equivalent expressions within one language. For generating a wider variety of phrasal paraphrases in Japanese, it is necessary to paraphrase functional expressions as well as content expressions. We propose a method of paraphrasing of Japanese functional expressions under style and readability specifications using a dictionary with two hierarchies: a morphological hierarchy and a semantic hierarchy. A remarkable characteristic of Japanese functional expressions is that each functional expression has many different variants. Each variant has one of four styles. In paraphrasing of Japanese functional expressions, a paraphrasing system should accept style specification, because consistent use in style is required. At the same time, control of readability of generated text is important in several applications, such as a reading aid, because functional expressions are critical units that determine sentence structures and meanings. Our system generates appropriate alternative expressions for 79% of source phrases in Japanese in an open test.
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