Kirrkirr: Transforming the Representation of Lexical Knowledge

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Kirrkirr Transforming the Representation of
Lexical Knowledge

• Christopher Manning
• University of Sydney
• http//www.sultry.arts.usyd.edu.au/kirrkirr/

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Project Objectives

• Aims of the project
• examining the richness of lexical structure, in
  particular the connotational and figurative use
  of words
• providing innovative ways for representing a
  dictionary, through creative use of the medium of
  computers
• augmenting dictionaries from corpora
• to be able to provide practical educationally
  useful programs as a result (at low labor cost)
• Main initial target an interactive front end for
  exploring or using the Warlpiri dictionary.

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Acknowledgements

• Ken Hale, Mary Laughren, Robert Hoogenraad, Jane
  Simpson, David Nash
• Many Warlpiri (Kay Ross for the audio)
• Kevin Jansz, Nitin Indurkhya, Wee Jim Sng
• Susan Poetsch, Miriam Corris
• and many others

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Research Program Lexicon

• A lexicon is not just words but a vast network of
  associations between words and within and across
  the concepts represented by words
• The aim of this work is to provide people with a
  better understanding of this conceptual map.
• Traditional paper dictionaries offer very limited
  ways for making such networks visible
• On a computer, one can imagine all sorts of ways
  of bringing out such relationships

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Research Computational Lexicography

• Dictionaries on computers are now commonplace
• But there has been little attempt to utilize the
  potential of the new medium
• Goal fun dictionary tools that are effective for
  language learning, browsing, and research
• Special interest dictionaries for minority
  languages. Here economic, motivational, and user
  support reasons all point to an important role
  for computers.

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Research Computational Lexicography

• Dictionaries on computers are now commonplace
• But there has been little attempt to utilise the
  potential of the new medium
• Most present a plain, search-oriented
  representation of the paper version
• Goal fun dictionary tools that are effective for
  browsing and language learning (cf. Kegl 1995)

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Research Computational Lexicography

• Fun dictionary tools
• Like flicking through a paper dictionary, but
  better
• Innovative ways for representing and linking
  dictionary information, through creative use of
  computer software
• Should improve user supports and incidental
  learning
• Focus exploration/dissemination, not creation

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MRD Structure

• The internal structures of current Machine
  Readable Dictionaries usually merely mimic the
  structure of the printed form (Boguraev 1990)
• Some work, notably WordNet (Miller 1995) has
  involved a fundamental rethinking of dictionary
  content and organization (here, organization via
  synsets which are related via links of part,
  subkind, opposite)
• But this research hasnt been taken to users.

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Research Program Education

• Dictionary structure and usability are often
  dictated by professional linguists, while the
  needs of others (speakers, semi-speakers, young
  users, second language learners) are not met
• Weiner (1994) The initial purpose of the OED
• to create a record of vocabulary so that English
  literature could be understood by all. But
  English scholarship grew up and lexicography grew
  with it inevitably parting company with the man
  in the street.
• Challenge is to avoid this.

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Dictionary usefulness and usability

• Kegl (1995) Machine-Readable Dictionaries and
  Education
• Originally, this paper was intended as a survey
  of educational applications using MRDs. As far as
  I have been able to determine, no such
  applications currently exist
• Standard dictionaries are reference works,
  ill-suited for use as learning tools
• Studies of American dictionary skills training
  show that many tasks achieve little in the way of
  education (but do teach word lookup!)

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Educational value of dictionaries

• However derived lexical information is useful!
• Think of a high school foreign language textbook
• terminology sets
• pictures with parts named
• vocabulary lists
• word explications
• Major issue
• Not many people sit around reading dictionaries
  need something fun

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Data on usability evaluating a paper dictionary

• Study of paper dictionary usability by Susan
  Poetsch, tested using Alawa dictionary (draft by
  Margaret Sharpe)
• In community, old people are very concerned to
  keep language strong, and help as volunteers in
  bilingual education. They are keen on dictionary
• However, they lack the literacy skills to use it
• Susan worked with people aged 2550
• Since volunteers, probably better than average
  literacy skills for the community

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Findings

• Not very literate A big dictionary is
  overwhelming to someone with emerging literacy
  skills
• People knew words are ordered but could not use
  ordering effectively (restart or flick randomly)
• Often around 3 minutes a word lookup
• People lost place in page regularly
• An overcrowding of information is confusing
• One word correspondences are easiest for users,
  but often unrealistic linguistically
• Subentries were confusing part of speech
  puzzling

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Findings (2)

• Regular dictionary users (especially, compilers!)
  grossly underestimate the time they have spent
  becoming familiar with dictionary structure
• If a dictionary is going to be made for a speech
  community, then the people in that community need
  to feel confident in using it.
• Teachers felt that the draft dictionary is too
  long and detailed for school use
• Conclusion These people need a different
  dictionary (My First Alawa)
• Would probably be used by adults as well as kids

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Our educational goals

• Aim at school kids
• Information seeking is a complex process which
  is often not attended to in K-12 education
  (Wallace et al. 1998)
• Provide learner supports for getting started with
  dictionaries
• Adaptable interface can cater to different needs
• Support for active reading by allowing note
  taking
• An interface where you can see words, but are not
  required to know words

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Kirrkirr A Warlpiri dictionary browser

• (Jansz 1998 Jansz, Manning and Indurkhya 1999)
• An environment for the interactive exploration of
  dictionaries.
• The design is general, but our current work has
  just been with Warlpiri
• Attempts to more fully utilize graphical
  interfaces, hypertext, multimedia, and different
  ways of indexing and accessing information
• Written in Java, it can either be run over the
  web high bandwidth or run locally (here Javas
  main advantage is cross-platform support).

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Specific goals

• An interactive environment that encouraged
  exploration easy and fun to use
• Reduction of the dependence on alphabetical
  order The low level of literacy in the region
  makes an e-dictionary potentially more useful
  than a paper edition
• Catering to the needs of different user groups
  (kids, teachers, professionals)
• Flexible enough to display appropriate
  information in appropriate ways depending on user
  level

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Overview

• Kirrkirr provides various modules
• Graph layout of word relationships
• Formatted dictionary entries
• Semantic domain browsing
• A notes facility for jotting in the margin
• Multimedia audio, pictures
• Advanced searching interfaces
• others in planning colors, figuration patterns
• These attempt to cater to users with different
  competence levels

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The lexical database

• Original text materials are stored in an ad hoc
  format using backslash codes origin runoff
• These are converted to XML using an
  error-correcting stack-based parser (written in
  PERL)
• The inconsistency and flexibility of dictionary
  entries made this a surprisingly difficult task.
• Many structural errors/inconsistencies/typos from
  years of hand maintenance in text editors and via
  regular expressions
• Many problems with link consistency
• Heuristic content-sensitive parser imposes data
  integrity
• Lots of Information Systems 101

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XML

• XML a descendant of SGML for structured markup
  of text
• XML separates the structure of the data from its
  presentation
• Much of the recent enthusiasm for XML has
  centered around representing simple and rigid
  structures such as database records
• The rich hierarchical and variable structure of
  dictionary entries is really more what something
  like XML excels at!
• Result remains a portable, tangible text file

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XML indexing

• XML is a median between the structure, indexing,
  etc. of a database, and the freedom of a word
  processor.
• To improve speed, an ad hoc index to the XML file
  is built, and can be used for rapid headword and
  gloss lookup and indexing which parts of the XML
  file to process.

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Visualization of dictionary information

• For applications with simple textual content
  behind them, there is little that can be done but
  an on-line reflection of a printed page
• But we want more than just definitions of words
  we want to know their relationships to other
  words, and the patterning in these relationships
• In a computational approach, can mediate between
  the lexical data and the user
• The interface can select from and choose how to
  present information (according to the users
  preferences) in many different ways

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Previous work

• Current systems present the search-dominated
  interface of classic Information Retrieval
  systems you type a word in a search box
• Results try to mimic, but are generally inferior
  to, the printed version of the dictionary
• Good feature rapid searching
• These systems do little to utilize the
  captivating qualities of computers
  interactivity, user control and adaptability
  (Brown 1985).

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Previous work (2)

• Only effective when user has a clearly specified
  information need even here, we are ignoring the
  distinction between information gained and
  knowledge sought (Sharpe 1995)
• Lack browsing, and chances for incidental or
  curiosity driven learning
• Lack tangibility and situatedness of paper
  ineffective for getting an idea of a collection
• We wish to exploit the essence of hypertext,
  which is click to explore browsing

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Previous work (3)

• Little research work (in corpus linguistics,
  visualization etc.) on dictionary visualization
• WordNet built a rich network of relationships,
  which fundamentally departed from the paper
  dictionary tradition, and has been used in many
  computational projects
• However very little has been done in the way of
  interfaces that make these relationships visible
  and intelligible to users.
• Graphical representations seem particularly
  important given our target users.

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MRD Interfaces WordNet
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Graph-based visualization

• There is a little previous work on graphical
  representations of dictionaries
• For instance, the visual-thesaurus by plumbdesign
  derived from WordNet
• But it is also a good demonstration of how
  chaotic and confusing graphical interfaces can
  become.

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Perils of visualization
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Graph-based visualization

• (Jansz 1998 Jansz, Manning and Indurkhya 1999)
• Classic graph layout problem
• Adapts work by Eades et al. (1998) and Huang et
  al. (1998) on visualization and navigation of WWW
  document linkages
• Uses the spring algorithm. Big advantage is that
  it is an iterative updating algorithm, and so
  gives an easy interactivity
• it wiggles and people can play with it.
• Clarity and simplicity of graph Software
  maintains a set of focus nodes to prevent
  overcrowding

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Educational advantages

• Alphabetical order is important, but
• A web of words offers other effective
  opportunities for learning
• A student can opportunistically explore words
  that are related in various ways
• Important semantic relationships can be
  understood

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Kirrkirr network display
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Kirrkirr network display
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Formatted dictionary entries

• Are produced automatically from the XML by using
  XSL (a style language)
• XSL allows easy modeling of some user
  preferences.
• Most trivially, one can leave out information
  such as part of speech, or detailed definitions
• This is useful as many users find information
  overload quite confusing and demotivating
• Can produce bilingual or monolingual dictionary
• Opportunities for various output styles, and
  formats such as RTF or TeX for printing.

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Formatted dictionary entries
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Rich typology of link types

• The semantically rich types of linkages present
  in a dictionary (synonym, antonym, hyponym,
  subheadword, variant, coverbs, ) solves one of
  the major problems of the web we have many link
  types with a clear semantic interpretation
• Use consistent color-coded text and edges to show
  these link types
• Can tell where you are going before clicking
• Dictionary links can be supplemented by links
  derived from collocational analysis of texts

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A collocations e.g

• pangurnu digging scoop
• pangurnu
• pili small coolamon/digging scoop
• rdaku hole in the ground
• kaninjarra downwards
• pangirni dig, produce cavity
• mulju soak in soft earth (dig for water)
• karlaja foot end of sleeping area
• pirrkirni scrape
• yirrarni put down

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Browsing

• Work (at PARC and elsewhere Pirolli et al. 1996)
  has stressed role for browsing as well as
  searching in information access
• It provides a context for learning
• We provide browsing in several ways
• conventional hypertext
• but with rich semantically-interpreted links
• their color-coding matches network edges
• network-based display of words
• browsing through semantic domains

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Semantic Domains

• Alphabetical order is one indexing strategy, but
  there are many others
• Most requested is ability to find things by
  semantic domains e.g., food, manufactured items.
• Essentially the nouns structure of WordNet, or
  the classical KR ISA hierarchy
• We can exploit the domain info in the dictionary

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Semantic Domains
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Other components

• Multimedia (currently pictures and audio)
• Can hear pronunciations gives a better
  under-standing of pronunciation than phonetic
  symbols
• pictures are more intelligible than descriptions
• (future videos of Warlpiri sign language?)

• Advanced search page
• search various fields, regular expressions, fuzzy
  spelling, etc.
• Notes
• one can annotate dictionary entries (to correct
  or personalise)

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Simple features

• Show the alphabet
• The list on the left gives concreteness, and
  tangibility
• people can start with one of those words
• One can just type a few letters and then look at
  the list traditional benefit of paper
  dictionary
• English lookup can be helpful when Warlpiri
  spelling fails
• Fuzzy spelling of Warlpiri a user support

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User study

• Mim Corris (Yuendumu, Willowra), Jane Simpson
  (Lajamanu)
• Observation and testing with primary and (lower)
  secondary students
• Observation of Warlpiri literacy workers
• Comments from teachers, other adults etc.
• Purely qualitative observational studies of
  dictionary use.
• Initial reactions quite enthusiastic
• Could use as a basis for classroom activities
  (better with some further development games and
  puzzles)

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A positive anecdote

• One of the introductory Warlpiri literacy
  students, who had not been very interested in the
  literacy class, spent nearly 3/4 hour looking at
  Kirrkirr apparently in absorbed concentration.
  She wasnt especially interested in the sound and
  picture possibilities. She moved between words,
  scrolling along the list, typing in the search,
  clicking on the words in the network pane. She
  wasnt even put off when the dictionary
  definitions stopped appearing looking at the
  networks of words instead. This is quite unlike
  her attitude to the backslash coded electronic
  dictionary (where she lost interest quickly
  because of the difficulty for her of narrowing
  down searches). After the Kirrkirr demo she
  asked if she could have a printed dictionary to
  take away with her to use in camp to learn the
  words. I interpret this as a desire to learn
  words in her own time and place.

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Endangered lang. dictionaries

• (Corris, Manning, Poetsch, and Simpson 1999).
  Based on 72 people.
• Testing both paper and electronic dictionaries
• competing goals documentation dictionaries vs.
  maintenance/learning dictionaries
• symbolic vs. practically useful organization
• lack of training, and limited literacy can make
  paper dictionaries ineffective
• 4560 minutes for 12 dictionary lookups
• lack of electricity makes e-dictionaries
  ineffective in some places (e.g., Indonesia)
• E-dictionaries can solve many usability issues
• font size, amount of info, infinite space, easy
  lookup, sound

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Conclusions

• Kirrkirr is just a prototype of what one can do
  to develop new ways to visualise lexicons
• We have demonstrated an approach to making
  dictionary information usable through the
  creation of an application which mediates between
  well-structured data and users needs for
  searching/browsing and presentation
• While we have focused our research on Warlpiri,
  the system can be easily applied to other
  languages the design is general

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Conclusions (cont.)

• ... The best future applications of MRDs in
  education will be those most able to respond to
  the insights and needs of their users (Kegl
  1995)
• Kirrkirr can be seen as a step towards the future
  of edictionaries

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