tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "The Use of Statistics in Language Research"

The literature concerning the application of statistics to linguistic problems and in particular to mechanical translation is reviewed. The conclusion is that much of the work done is of little direct use for mechanical translation, and that some of it is based on a misapprehension of what statistical techniques can in fact do. | Mechanical Translation November 1958 pp. 67-73 The Use of Statistics in Language Research A. F. Parker-Rhodes Cambridge Language Research Unit Cambridge England The literature concerning the application of statistics to linguistic problems and in particular to mechanical translation is reviewed. The conclusion is that much of the work done is of little direct use for mechanical translation and that some of it is based on a misapprehension of what statistical techniques can in fact do. Statistical methods can play a useful part in the development of mechanical translation procedures once these have been well established but have little to contribute at the present stage of the work. THERE ARE many ways in which statistical techniques might be pressed into the service of language research and in particular the theory of mechanical translation and information retrieval. Most of these have had their advocates The purpose of this paper is to review briefly the literature of the subject and to draw conclusions as to how much of this work can be regarded as a legitimate use of statistics and as to how relevant it is to the progress of languageprocessing technology. There appear to be five main topics covered. First I shall enumerate these and then I shall refer seriatim to the works available in the . library upon each of them. 1 Lexicography this includes the methods and techniques of compiling lexical information whether this takes the form of a dictionary of a more or less conventional character or a thesaurus. 2 Approximative Methods these are methods of machine translation which aim to rely on keeping errors below a preconceived threshold of tolerance they use statistics mainly to predict how little work need be done to achieve this. 3 Economics included here are applications of statistics to ascertain the size of computers needed the time taken to operate programs etc. 4 Coding the problems of coding of in formation have a statistical aspect .