Claudia Soria

Automatic semantics extraction in law documents

Normative texts can be viewed as composed by formal partitions (articles, paragraphs, etc.) or by semantic units containing fragments of a regulation (provisions). Provisions can be described according to a metadata scheme which consists of provision types and their arguments. This semantic annotation of a normative text can make the retrieval of norms easier. The detection and description of the provisions according to the established metadata scheme is an analytic intellectual activity aiming at classifying portions of a normative text into provision types and to extract their arguments. Automatic facilities supporting this intellectual activity are desirable. Particularly, in this paper, two modules able to qualify fragments of a normative text in terms of provision types and to extract their arguments are presented.

Multilingual resources for NLP in the lexical markup framework (LMF)

Optimizing the production, maintenance and extension of lexical resources is one the crucial aspects impacting natural language processing (NLP). A second aspect involves optimizing the process leading to their integration in applications. With this respect, we believe that a consensual specification on monolingual, bilingual and multilingual lexicons can be a useful aid for the various NLP actors. Within ISO, one purpose of Lexical Markup Framework (LMF, ISO-24613) is to define a standard for lexicons that covers multilingual lexical data.

Wordnet-LMF: fleshing out a standardized format for wordnet interoperability

In this paper we present Wordnet-LMF, a dialect of ISO Lexical Markup Framework that instantiates LMF for representing wordnets. Wordnet-LMF was developed in the framework of the EU KYOTO project for the specific purpose of endowing a set of wordnets with a standardized interoperability format allowing the interchange of lexico-semantic information encoded in each of them. The aim of this format is twofold a) to give a preliminary assessment of LMF, by large-scale application to real lexical resources; b) to endow WordNet with a format representation that will allow easier integration among resources sharing the same structure (i.e other wordnets) and, more importantly, across resources with different theoretical and implementation approaches.

Automatic Classification and Analysis of Provisions in Italian Legal Texts: A Case Study

In this paper we address the problem of automatically enriching legal texts with semantic annotation, an essential pre–requisite to effective indexing and retrieval of legal documents. This is done through illustration of SALEM (Semantic Annotation for LEgal Management), a computational system developed for automated semantic annotation of (Italian) law texts. SALEM is an incremental system using Natural Language Processing techniques to perform two tasks: i) classify law paragraphs according to their regulatory content, and ii) extract relevant text fragments corresponding to specific semantic roles that are relevant for the different types of regulatory content. The paper sketches the overall architecture of SALEM and reports results of a preliminary case study on a sample of Italian law texts.

Infrastructure for Standardization of Asian Language Resources

As an area of great linguistic and cultural diversity, Asian language resources have received much less attention than their western counterparts. Creating a common standard for Asian language resources that is compatible with an international standard has at least three strong advantages: to increase the competitive edge of Asian countries, to bring Asian countries to closer to their western counterparts, and to bring more cohesion among Asian countries. To achieve this goal, we have launched a two year project to create a common standard for Asian language resources. The project is comprised of four research items, (1) building a description framework of lexical entries, (2) building sample lexicons, (3) building an upper-layer ontology and (4) evaluating the proposed framework through an application. This paper outlines the project in terms of its aim and approach.

Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) for NLP Multilingual Resources

Optimizing the production, maintenance and extension of lexical resources is one the crucial aspects impacting Natural Language Processing (NLP). A second aspect involves optimizing the process leading to their integration in applications. With this respect, we believe that the production of a consensual specification on multilingual lexicons can be a useful aid for the various NLP actors. Within ISO, one purpose of LMF (ISO-24613) is to define a standard for lexicons that covers multilingual data.

Exploring Interoperability of Language Resources: the Case of Cross-lingual Semi-automatic Enrichment of Wordnets

In this paper we present an application fostering the integration and interoperability of computational lexicons, focusing on the particular case of mutual linking and cross-lingual enrichment of two wordnets, the ItalWordNet and Sinica BOW lexicons. This is intended as a case-study investigating the needs and requirements of semi-automatic integration and interoperability of lexical resources, in the view of developing a prototype web application to support the GlobalWordNet Grid initiative.

Language Service Ontology

The Language Grid is a distinctive language service infrastructure in the sense that it accommodates a wide variety of user needs, ranging from technical novices to experts; language resource consumers to language resource providers. As these language services are various in type and each of them can be idiosyncratic in many aspects, the service infrastructure has to address the issue of interoperability. A key to solve this issue is not only to build the services around standardized resources and interfaces, but also to establish a knowledge structure that copes effectively with a range of language services. Given this knowledge structure, referred to as a service ontology, each language service can be systematically classified and its usage specified by a corresponding API. This not only enables the utilization of existing language resources but facilitates the dissemination of newly created language resources as services.

Towards Agent-based Cross-Lingual Interoperability of Distributed Lexical Resources

In this paper we present an application fostering the integration and interoperability of computational lexicons, focusing on the particular case of mutual linking and cross-lingual enrichment of two wordnets, the ItalWordNet and Sinica BOW lexicons. This is intended as a case-study investigating the needs and requirements of semi-automatic integration and interoperability of lexical resources.

Query Expansion using LMF-Compliant Lexical Resources

This paper reports prototype multilingual query expansion system relying on LMF compliant lexical resources. The system is one of the deliverables of a three-year project aiming at establishing an international standard for language resources which is applicable to Asian languages. Our important contributions to ISO 24613, standard Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) include its robustness to deal with Asian languages, and its applicability to cross-lingual query tasks, as illustrated by the prototype introduced in this paper.