This paper introduces an English-Polish-English comprehension tool. In fact, it is a special electronic dictionary wich is sensitive to the context of the input words or expressions. The dictionary program provides translations for any piece of text displayed on a computer screen without requiring user interaction. This functionality is provided by a three-layer process: (1) text acquisition from the screen, (2) morpho-syntactic analysis of the context of the selected word and (3) the dictionary lookup. By dividing dictionary entries into smaller pieces and indexing them individually, the program is able to display a restricted set of information that is as relevant to the context a spossible. For this purpose, we utilize automatic and semi-automatic XML tools for processing dictionary content. The construction of such an electronic dictionary involues natural language processing at almost every point of operation. Both dictionary entries and user input require linquistic analysis and intelligent pattern-matching techniques in order to identify multi-word expressions in the context of the input. An on-going research makes the program incorporate more sophisticated language technology: multi-word phrases and sentences are recognized, and translation hints are offered in an intelligent way - by a parser/transformer module matching underspecified patterns of different degrees of abstraction.
Counting in natural language presupposes that we can successfully identify what counts as one, which, as we argue, relies on how and whether one can balance two pressures on learning nominal predicates, which we formalise in probabilistic and information theoretic terms: individuation (establishing a schema for judging what counts as one with respect to a predicate); and reliability (establishing a reliable criterion for applying a predicate). This hypothesis has two main consequences. First, the mass/count distinction in natural language is a complex phenomenon that is partly grounded in a theory of individuation, which we contend must integrate particular qualitative properties of entities, among which a key role is player by those that rely on our spatial perception. Second, it allows us to predict when we can expect the puzzling variation in mass/count lexicalization, cross- and intralinguistically: namely, exactly when the two learning pressures of individuation and reliability conflict.
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