English article insertion

For an 8,300-word sample of English text we have found that it is possible to provide at least an acceptable article for more than 90 per cent of the noun occurrences at a "cost" of providing a dual article for half of the occurrences. This can be achieved by making use of the following relatively simple criteria for article selection: (1) prior classification of nouns according to the articles they are expected to take in natural-language text, (2) grammatical number of the noun, (3) presence or absence of a following "of" phrase, and (4) presence or absence of certain specified modifiers. A study of noun classification indicates that it can be done with acceptable consistency and reliability. The recommended pattern of article insertion was implemented as part of the Bunker-Ramo machinetranslation program and tested on a brief sample text. This work has indicated that a certain amount of further improvement in article insertion can be achieved by extension of the above criteria but that further progress will require dealing with articles on the semantic level—in terms of semantic attributes and semantic relations.