Anchoring Floating Quantifiers in Japanese-to-English Machine Translation

In this paper we present an algorithm to anchor floating quantifiers in Japanese, a language in which quantificational nouns and numeralclassifier combinations can appear separated from the noun phrase they quantify. The algorithm differentiates degree and event modifiers from nouns that quantify noun phrases. It then finds a suitable anchor for such floating quantifiers. To do this, the algorithm considers the part of speech of the quantifier and the target, the semantic relation between them, the case marker of the antecedent and the meaning of the verb that governs the two constituents. The algorithm has been implemented and tested in a rule-based Japanese-to-English machine translation system, with an accuracy of 76% and a recall of 97%. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n One interesting phenomenon in Japanese is the fact that quantifiers can appear in two main positions, as pre-modifier in a noun phrase (1), or 'floating' as adjuncts to the verb phrase, typically in pre-verbal position (2). 1,2 (1) watashi-wa 3-ko-no kgki-wo tabeta I-TOP 3-CL-ADN cake-ACC ate