Toward an NLG System for Bantu languages: first steps with Runyankore (demo)

Joan Byamugisha, C. Maria Keet, Brian DeRenzi


Abstract
There are many domain-specific and language-specific NLG systems, of which it may be possible to adapt to related domains and languages. The languages in the Bantu language family have their own set of features distinct from other major groups, which therefore severely limits the options to bootstrap an NLG system from existing ones. We present here our first proof-of-concept application for knowledge-to-text NLG as a plugin to the Protege 5.x ontology development system, tailored to Runyankore, a Bantu language indigenous to Uganda. It comprises a basic annotation model for linguistic information such as noun class, an implementation of existing verbalisation rules and a CFG for verbs, and a basic interface for data entry.
Anthology ID:
W17-3523
Volume:
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Natural Language Generation
Month:
September
Year:
2017
Address:
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Venue:
INLG
SIG:
SIGGEN
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
154–155
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W17-3523
DOI:
10.18653/v1/W17-3523
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Joan Byamugisha, C. Maria Keet, and Brian DeRenzi. 2017. Toward an NLG System for Bantu languages: first steps with Runyankore (demo). In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Natural Language Generation, pages 154–155, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Toward an NLG System for Bantu languages: first steps with Runyankore (demo) (Byamugisha et al., INLG 2017)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/nodalida-main-page/W17-3523.pdf