Reusing an ontology to generate numeral classifiers

In this paper, we present a solution to the problem of generating Japanese numeral classifiers using semantic classes from an ontology. Most nouns must take 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 those classifiers which have to be listed. It 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.Accepted versio