Multilingual generation of numeral classifiers using a common ontology

Abstract

In this paper, we present a solution to the problem of generating both Japanese and Korean

numeral classifiers using semantic classes from an ontology. Most nouns must use a numeral

classifier when they are quantified in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malay and

Thai. In order to select an appropriate classifier, we propose an algorithm which associates

classifiers with semantic classes and uses inheritance to list only exceptional classifiers with

individual nouns. The algorithm generates sortal classifiers with an accuracy of 81%. We reuse

the ontology provided by Goi-Taikei — a Japanese lexicon, and show that it is a reasonable

choice for this task, requiring information to be entered for less than 6% of individual nouns.