A SYSTEM FOR TRANSLATING LOCATIVE PREPOSITIONS 
FROM ENGLISH INTO FRENCH* 
Nathalie Japkowicz 
Department of Computer Science 
Rutgers University 
New Brunswick, NJ 08903 
nat~yoko.rutgers.edu 
Janyce M. Wiebe 
Department of Computer Science 
University of Toronto 
Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 
wiebe~cs.toronto.edu 
Abstract 
Machine translation of locative prepositions is 
not straightforward, even between closely re- 
lated languages. This paper discusses a sys- 
tem of translation of locative prepositions be- 
tween English and French. The system is 
based on the premises that English and French 
do not always conceptualize objects in the 
same way, and that this accounts for the major 
differences in the ways that locative preposi- 
tions are used in these languages. This paper 
introduces knowledge representations of con- 
ceptualizations of objects, and a method for 
translating prepositions based on these con- 
ceptual representations. 
1 Introduction 
This paper presents an analysis of the differ- 
ences in the uses of locative prepositions in 
two languages, and then describes an auto- 
matic system of translation that is based on 
this analysis. 
Our research originated from the observa- 
tion that even between two closely related lan- 
guages such as English and French, locative 
prepositions of even simple sentences do not 
seem to be translated from one language to 
the other in a clearly systematic and coherent 
way. However, the translation becomes more 
coherent if we introduce Herskovits' idea of 
the ideal meaning of a preposition (Herskovits 
1986) and Lakoff's idea of Idealized Cognitive 
Models (ICM's) (Lakoff 1987). A central part 
of our research was to design entities based 
*The research described in this paper was con- 
ducted at the Uxfivez~ity of Toronto. 
on Lakoff's ICM's. We call these entities cor.- 
ceptual representations of objects. The main 
thesis of this paper is that, even though the 
ideal meanings of the locative prepositions we 
studied are the same in English and in French, 
these two languages do not always conceptual- 
ize the objects involved in s scene in the same 
way and that this leads to differences in the 
translation of locative prepositions. This the- 
ory seems suitable to pairs of languages other 
than English and French, as well. 
In addition, we will also desccibe how the 
system detects abnormalities and ambiguities 
using knowledge required for the translation 
task. 
This paper is organized as follows: section 
2 presents an analysis of and a solution to the 
problem of translating locative prepositions 
from English into French, section 3 presents 
the conceptual representations of objects, sec- 
tion 4 presents the algorithm we designed and 
implemented for translating locative preposi- 
tions, section 5 discusses the detection of ab- 
normalities and ambiguities, and section 6 is 
the conclusion. 
2 Translating Locative 
Prepositions 
We now describe the differences between En- 
glish and French locative expressions and give 
a possible analysis of the problem. Specifi- 
cally, we concentrate on the translation of the 
three locative prepositions 'in', 'on', and 'at', 
into the French prepositions 'dana', 'surf, and 
'&', in the context of simple sentences or ex- 
pressions of the form: 
153 
(located object)(be)(locative preposition) 
(reference object) 
(located object)(locative preposition) 
(reference object) 
2.1 Examples of the problem 
While in the most representative uses of loca- 
tive prepositions, there is a direct correspon- 
dence between English and French ('in' corre- 
sponding to 'dans', 'on' to 'sur', and 'at' to 
'tL'), in many cases, this correspondence does 
not hold. 
The following pairs of sentences illustrate 
cases in which the correspondences hold: 
(1) The boy is in his room. 
Le garcon est dazes sa chambre. 
(2) The glass is on the table. 
Le verre est sur la table. 
(3) The secretary is at her desk. 
La secr~taire est d son bureau. 
Senten  (4), (5), and (6), in contrast, 
trate cases in which the correspondences do 
not hold: 
(4) 
(5) 
My friend is in the picture. 
Mon and(e) est sur la photo. 
The lounge chair is in the shade. 
La chaise longue est d l'ombre. 
(6) Our professor is on the bus. 
Notre professeur est dan le bus. 
At first sight, the correspondence between En- 
glish and French locative prepositions may 
seem arbitrary. Our analysis, however, reveals 
that coherence might be found. 
2.2 Analysis of the problem 
Our analysis takes its principal sources in 
the works of Herskovits (1986) and Grimaud 
(1988). 
2.2.1 Herskovits' contribution 
Herskovits (1986) contributed to the solution 
to our problem by introducing the concept of 
the ideal meaning of a locative preposition. 
This concept is inspired by Rosch's (1977) pro- 
totype theory, in which human categorization 
of objects is viewed as organized around pro- 
totypes (best instances of the category) and 
distances from these prototypes (the shorter 
the distance of an object away from a proto- 
type, the more representative of the category 
the object is). In the case of prepositions, ?ro- 
to~ypical or ideal meanings are geometrical re- 
lations between the located object, the object 
whose location is being specified in the sen- 
tence, and the reference object, the object in- 
dicating the location of the located object. 
A second contribution of Herskovits is her 
case study of the three locative prepositions 
'in', 'on', and 'at'. Our own study of 35 dif- 
ferent cases is heavily based on this part of 
Herskovits' work. 
2.2.2 Grimaud's contribution 
Grimaud (1988) presents a linguistic analy- 
sis of locative prepositions in English versus 
French. His theory is based on Lakoff & John- 
son (1980) and Lakoff (1987) and uses the no- 
tion of com:eptua//zatioas of objects. A con- 
ceptualization is a mental representation of an 
object or an idea which takes into considera- 
tion not only the =objective truth ~ about that 
object or idea, but also human biological per- 
ception and experience. 
In his theory, Grimaud suggests that the 
cases in which the correspondences described 
in section 2.1 do not hold are not simply ex- 
ceptional but rather are due to differences 
in the ways that English and French concep- 
tualize the objects involved in the relation. 
The reason why the same object can be con- 
ceptualized as different geometrical objects in 
different languages, given a particular situa- 
tion, is that objects have several properties 
(or aspects) and different languages might not 
choose to highlight and hide the same proper- 
ties (or aspects) of a given object in a given 
situation. This happens in (6), for example 
(under the interpretation in which the profes- 
sor is riding the bus rather than being located 
on the roof of the bus)-- English conceptu- 
alizes the bus as a surface that can support 
entities, by highlighting only its bottom plat- 
form, while French conceptualizes the bus as a 
volume that can contain entities, by highlight- 
ing its bottom surface, its sides, and its roof 
altogether. This leads to a difference in the 
way that English and French express the spa- 
tial relation: English uses 'on', the preposition 
154 
appropriate for expressing a relation between 
a point and a surface, and French uses 'dans' 
(the French equivalent of 'in'), the preposition 
appropriate for expressing a relation between 
a point and a volume. The appropriateness of 
a preposition for expressing a certain relation 
is determined by its ideal meanings. 
2.2.3 Our synthesis 
Our task consisted of synthesizing Herskovits' 
and Grimand's contributions and making this 
synthesis suitable for a computational system, 
since both Herskovits and Grimaud's analyses 
are mainly linguistic and not directly geared 
towards computation. 
Our first task was to define the ideal mean- 
ings of each preposition: 
AT/k: 
• relation between two points. 
ON/SUIt: 
• relation between a point and a 
surface whose boundaries are ir- 
relevant. 
• relation between a point and a 
line. 
IN/DANS: 
• relation between a point and a 
bounded surface. 
• relation between a point and an 
empty volume. 
• relation between a point and a full 
volume. ~ 
Our next task was to develop a knowledge 
representation of a conceptualization of an ob- 
ject, that is, a representation of the way an 
object can be conceptualized, given a particu- 
lar language, a particular situation, etc. Typ- 
ically, in our application, these conceptualiza- 
tions are geometrical objects, such as points, 
lines, surfaces, and volumes. 
1 Note that Herskovlts' notion of ideal meaning in- 
volves more information than ours: rather than the 
vague term 'relation', Herskovits identifies the specific 
sort of relation that holds between the two objects, 
such as coincidence, support, and containment. For 
the specific problem in translation that we address, 
such specifications axe unnecessary. They would be 
necessary, however, in a system designed for a deeper 
understanding than ours is designed to achieve. 
Our final task was to design a system of 
translation. Our system works as follows: 
given the source-language sentence, its objec- 
tive meaning (i.e., its language-independent 
meaning) is derived. This is done by first us- 
ing the ideal meanings of the source-language 
preposition to find the conceptualization that 
applies to the reference object, and then de- 
riving the objective meaning of the sentence 
from this conceptualization. (Because each 
conceptualization of an object used as a ref- 
erence object corresponds to some objective 
meaning, this last step is easily performed.) 
Given the objective meaning of the sentence, 
the conceptualization of the reference object 
that should be used in the target language 
is then found. Finally, using the list of ideal 
meanings of the target.language prepositions 
together with the target-language conceptual- 
ization, the system derives the preposition to 
be used in the target-language sentence. 
2.2.4 Other work 
Independently, Zelinsky-Wibbelt (1990) took 
an. approach sin~lar to ours to the problem of 
translating locative prepositions. She worked 
on translation between English and German 
rather than English~and French. This sup- 
ports our hypothesis that the theory we use 
can be extended to pairs of languages other 
than English and French. 
In addition to the types of expressions our 
system translates, her system translates sen- 
tences with verbs other than 'to be'. The 
reason why we chose not to process sen- 
fences using verbs other than 'to be' was to 
study the prepositions themselves in detail, 
before addressing the more complicated prob- 
lem of their interactions with verbs. Zelinsky- 
Wibbelt does not refer to any preliminary de- 
tailed study of the prepositions themselves. 
We carried on a detailed bilingual study of 
locative prepositions by adapting and expand- 
ing the case studies of Herskovits (1986). 
3 The Conceptual Repre- 
sentation of Objects 
The central entity in our research is the 
conceptual representation of objects (or con- 
ceptual representation), which represents a 
conceptualization together with information 
155 
about the conditions necessary for the con- 
ceptualization to hold. 
A conceptual representation of an object is 
composed of a conditional part and a descrip- 
tive part. The conditional part is a list of 
properties of the object and of its situation 
in the sentence. The former kind of prop- 
erty is objective information about the ob- 
ject, such as its shape, the parts it is made 
of, and its function. The latter properties 
are whether the object is a located or refer- 
ence object, and whether the sentence is in 
English or French. The descriptive part is a 
description of a conceptualization of that ob- 
ject. This part is conceptual, rather than ob- 
jective. Here follows a detailed description of 
conceptual representations. 2 
3.1 The conditional part 
The conditional part is made up of the follow- 
ing types of properties: 
* The ro/e in the sentence of the object being 
considered (located or reference object). 3 
* The/gnguage in which the sentence is ut- 
tered (English or French). This condition is 
crucial to the system because not all conceptu- 
aiizations are possible in both languages, and 
these differences account for differences in use 
of the prepositions. This point is important, 
for example, for pairs of sentences (4), where 
a picture is conceptualized as a volume in En- 
glish and as a surface in French; for pairs of 
sentences (5), where the shade is conceptual- 
ized as a Volume in English and as a point in 
French; and for pairs of sentences (6), where 
a bus is conceptualized as a surface in English 
and as a volume in French. 
* The properties of the reference object that 
are relevant to the objective spatial relation 
expressed in the sentence (these properties are 
~Certain e~pects of the conceptual representations 
were implemented for extensihillty or for the purposes 
Of'LmhlgUlty and error detection. For the sake of com- 
pletez~ss, we describe all aspects in this section, even 
those not directly related to tr~nA|~tion (see Japkowlcz 
1990 for furthe¢ explanation of these aspects). 
aNote that a located object is cdways conceptual- 
ized as a point. This is so because the conceptualiza- 
tion of the located object has no impact on the use 
of the prepositions. It is the conceptualization of the 
reference object that is relevant. 
language independent). This part of the con- 
ceptual representation specifies the objective 
situation in which the object being conceptu- 
alized is involved. It is central to the system 
because it is common to English and French 
(since it describes an objective situation) and 
is the part of the conceptual representation 
that allows a matching between English and 
French. For example, consider (4). The prop- 
erties of a picture that are relevant given the 
objective meaning of the sentence are the fact 
that it is the re-creator of an environment, 
with entities included in that environment, 
and that it is an object with a very small, 
almost non-existent, width. These properties 
are common to English and French. What dif- 
fers are the conceptualizations: English high- 
lights the first property, conceptualizing the 
picture as a volume, while French highlights 
the second, considering the width to be non- 
existent and conceptualizing the picture as a 
surface. 
* World-lmowledge conditions involving the 
located object of the sentence (for ~mple, 
whether the located object can be supported 
by the reference object). These conditions are 
used to check the plausibility of a sentence 
with respect to the located object. For ~Y,~rn. 
pie, the sentences in (6) are plausible, while 
the sentence 
(7) The elephant is on the bus 
is not, since an elephant is too heavy to be 
supported by a bus. In general, this condi- 
tion is used to check for abnormalities within 
one language rather than to account for dif- 
ferences between English and French. Section 
5 describes how the system detects such ab- 
normalities. 
* Ez4ra-sentential constraints. Extra- 
sentential constraints are pragmatic con- 
straints, derived from the context in which 
the sentence is uttered, that can influence the 
choice of preposition. For example: 
(8) The gas station is at the freeway. \[Her- 
skovits 1986, p. 138\] 
This sentence is valid only when the speaker 
pictures himself or herself as being on a tra- 
jectory intersecting the reference object at the 
156 
point of focus. At its current state, the sys- 
tem deals solely with isolated sentences, so it 
is unable to perform this checking. 
3.2 The descriptive part 
The descriptive part of a conceptual represen- 
tation includes the following three types of in- 
formation about the conceptualization: its di. 
mension, its fullness, and its width. 
* Its dimension is the main information 
about the conceptualization. The possible val- 
ues of the dimension field include point, line, 
surface, and volume. 
* Its fullness can take the values empty or 
ful/. Fullness is important when, for example, 
the dimension is volume. Consider the follow- 
ing sentences. 
(9) The girl is in the tree. 
(10) The nail is in the tree. 
One needs to differentiate between the situ- 
ation of (9), in which the located object (the 
girl) is located in the tree, and the one of (10), 
in which the located object (the nail) is em- 
bedded in the tree. This distinction, however, 
is not needed to translate between English and 
French (it might be needed with other lan- 
guages, though); rather, it is needed to un- 
derstand the sentence. 
* Its width takes the values ezistent or non~- 
ezistent. 4 Width is important for sentences 
such as those in (4), where the width is con- 
ceptualized as being non-existent in French, 
and existent in English, this difference lead- 
ing to a difference in the use of the locative 
prepositions (French uses 'sur' and English 
uses 'in'). 
4Remember that the descriptive part describes con- 
ceptualizations. Therefore, when we describe the 
width to be existent or non-existent, it is the width 
in the conceptualization that is in question, not that 
of the real object. Objectively, for example, a pic- 
ture has a width, but this width is so small that it is 
ignored in some of its conceptualizations. Objectively 
also, a picture is the re-creator of an environment. The 
conceptualizations in which this objective property is 
highlighted have an existent width, since environments 
can contain 3-clJmensional entities. 
4 The Algorithm 
4.1 Overview 
Our method of translation first transforms 
the source-language sentence into a source- 
language representation (the English con- 
ceptual level), and then translates the 
source-language representation into a target- 
language representation (the French concep- 
tual level). This target-language representa- 
tion is finally used to generate the target- 
language sentence. The algorithm works in 
four phases: 
i. Initialization 
2. Derivation of the objective meaning of 
the sentence 
3. Derivation of the target-language 
preposition 
4. Finalization 
4.2 Phases 
In the description that follows, each step is 
explained and illustrated with example (6). 
4.2.1 In|tiAHcatlon 
The initialization phase is composed of two 
steps. The first consists of parsing the in- 
put sentence and returning some information 
about each noun, such as its role in the sen- 
tence (located or reference object), its French 
translation, and certain useful French mor- 
phological and syntactic information about it. 
In sentence (6), for example, this informa- 
tion is that 'Our professor' is the located ob- 
ject, that its French translation is 'Notre pro- 
fesseur', and that 'professeur' is a masculine 
common noun in French; and also that 'bus' 
is the reference object, that its French trans- 
lation is 'bus', and that 'bus' is a masculine 
common noun in French. 
The second step consists of building the 
conceptual representations of the located and 
reference objects (see Japkowicz 1990 and 
Japkowicz & Wiebe 1990). All possible 
conceptual representations are built at this 
point--the discrimination of those that are 
relevant to the sentence from the others is 
clone in the next phase. 
157 
4.2.2 Derivation of the objective 
meaning of the sentence 
This phase is also performed in two steps. The 
first step identifies the English conceptual rep- 
resentations relevant to the sentence, accord- 
ing to the preposition used. That is, given 
the ideal meaning of the preposition used in 
the English sentence, certain conceptual rep- 
resentations that were built in the previous 
phase are discarded. In example (6), the only 
conceptual representation of a bus that will re- 
main is that of a surface, since the ideal mean- 
ing of 'on' allows the reference object to be a 
surface or a line and, while a bus is sometimes 
conceptualized as a surface, it is never concep- 
tualized as a line. 
The second step discards even more concep- 
tual representations, this time based on the 
type and/or properties of the located object. 
In sentence (6), no conceptual representation 
is discarded at this point. This is so because 
the only condition on the located object is that 
it can be supported by the reference object, 
and this condition is verified for (6) because a 
human being can be supported by a bus. In 
sentence (7), however, the conceptual repre- 
sentations of a bus as a surface are discarded 
because an elephant c~nnot be supported by 
a bus. 
The second step also builds the objective 
meaning of the sentence. The objective mean- 
ing of a sentence is derived from the concep- 
tual representation chosen in the first step of 
this phase. Its main component is the proper- 
~ies field. This properties field has the same 
type of content as the properties field of the 
conceptual representations. It is this shared 
field that allows a matching between the En- 
glish conceptual representation and an objec- 
tive meaning. 
In certain cases, in this step, several objec- 
tive meanings can be derived. In these cases, 
the sentence is ambiguous (see section 5). 
4.2.3 Derivation of the target- 
language preposition 
This phase has, once again, two steps. The 
first consists of matching the objective mean- 
ing of the sentence to a French conceptual- 
ization. This can be done in a way similar 
to that of the previous step: by matching the 
properties field of the objective meaning of the 
sentence with the properties field of the French 
conceptual representation of the reference ob- 
ject. 
The second step consists of matching a 
French preposition to the French conceptual 
representation derived by the previous step. 
This is done in a straight-forward way, using 
a look-up table. In example (6), the French 
conceptualization is matched to the preposi- 
tion 'dans'. 
4.2.4 Finalization 
The Finalization phase consists of only one 
step: that of generating the French sentence. 
In example (6), it is at this point that the 
French version, "Notre professeur est darts le 
bus", is generated, s 
4.3 Coverage 
We implemented the system on a large num- 
ber of cases, where each case is an "objective 
situation ~, such as an object being on a hori- 
zontal support or an object being in a closed 
environment. There are 35 cases, which can 
be divided into the following three categories: 
• Specific, i.e., cases in which the ref- 
erence object is a given object; the 
expressions 'on the wall' (meaning 
against the wall), 'at sea', and 'in the 
air' are the specific cases in the system. 
• Semi-genera~ i.e., cases in which the 
reference object belongs to a well de- 
fined category of objects. Examples are 
being in a country (e.g., 'in England' 
and 'in France') and being in a piece 
of clothing (e.g., 'in a hat', 'in a shirt', 
and 'in a pair of shorts'). 
• Genera~ i.e., cases in which the refer- 
ence object belongs to an abstract ea~ 
egory of objects. Examples are being 
on a planar surface (e.g., 'on the table', 
'on the floor', 'on the chair', and 'on the 
roof') and being at an artifact with a 
given purpose (e.g., 'at the door', 'at 
his books', 'at his desk', and 'at his 
typewriter'). 
SNote that we are not taking ambiguity into con- 
aideratlon here. If we were, then the sentence "Notre 
professeur est Bur le bus." would also be generated 
(mearfing that our professor is on the roof of the bus). 
This ca~e will be discussed in section 5. 
158 
Of the 35 cases, only 3 are in the specific 
category. Of the remaining, 18 cases are in 
the semi-general category and 14 are in the 
general category. 
5 Error and Ambiguity 
Detection 
The conceptual representations that were de- 
signed for the purpose of translation can also 
be used to detect certain kinds of errors and 
ambiguities. Below, we describe two kinds 
that can be detected by the system: concep- 
tual errors and conceptual ambiguity. 
5.1 Conceptual errors 
The system can detect two types of conceptual 
errors: conceptualization errors and usage er- 
rors or abnormalities. 
5.1.1 Conceptualization errors 
Conceptualization errors occur when the 
preposition requires the reference object to be 
conceptualized in a way that it cannot be in 
the language considered. An example of a sen- 
tence where such an error occurs is 
(11) * The boy is at the shade. 
This sentence is erroneous because 'at' re- 
quires 'shade' to be conceptualized as a point, 
but 'shade' used as a reference object can 
never be conceptualized as a point in English. 
This error can be detected by the system be- 
cause no conceptual representation of shade as 
a reference object is built whose conceptual- 
ization is point. This error is detected in the 
first step of the second phase of the system. 
5.1.2 Usage errors and abnormalities 
Usage errors and abnormalities occur when 
the demands of the preposition are satisfied 
by the reference object, but the conditious re- 
quired of the located object by the conceptual 
representation, or general conditions required 
of all types of relations , are not. Such an error 
occurs in the following: 
(12) * The man is in the board. 
The use of 'in' is fine, considering just the ref- 
erence object; for example, a nail can be lo- 
cated in a board. The problem is that the 
located object is 'man', and a man cannot be 
embedded in a board under normal circum- 
stances. This error is detected by the system 
because the condition on the located object 
(in the conditional part of the conceptual rep- 
resentation) is not verified. This error is de- 
tected in the second step of the second phase 
of the system. 
5.2 Conceptual ambiguities 
Conceptual ambiguity is ambiguity where the 
English preposition has several meanings in 
French. The system can detect two types of 
conceptual ambiguities: simple and complex. 
Both are detected during the first step of the 
second phase of the system. 
5.2.1 Simple conceptual amblgulty 
In the case of simple conceptual ambiguity, an 
ambiguous English preposition is translated 
into a single French preposition that is am- 
biguous in the same way. For example: 
(18) The boy is at the supermarket. 
Sentence (13) can be understood to mean ei- 
ther that the boy is shopping at the supermar- 
ket, or that he is on a trajectory going by the 
supermarket, and is currently located at the 
supermarket. Its French translation is 
(14) Le garcon est au supermarch~, 
which carries the same ambiguity as the En- 
glish sentence. This type of ambiguity is de- 
tected when several English conceptual rep- 
resentatious can be iustantiated for a single 
sentence. All instantiated English concep- 
tual representations have:identical descriptive 
parts. In the case of simple conceptual am- 
biguity, all the French conceptual represen- 
tations happen to have the same descriptive 
part. 
5.2.2 Complex conceptual ambiguity 
The difference between simple and complex 
conceptual ambiguity is the following: in the 
former, the French sentence carries the same 
ambiguity as the English sentence, but in the 
latter, the ambiguity is not carried through 
the translation (so the English sentence has 
two different French translations). Complex 
conceptual ambiguity is present in (6), which 
is repeated here as sentence (15): 
159 
(15) Our professor is on the bus. 
As discussed earlier, this sentence is ambigu- 
ous in that the professor could be riding the 
bus, or he could be located on the roof of 
the bus. This sentence is translated into two 
French sentences, one for each case: e 
(16) Notre professeur est daus le bus. 
(17) Notre professeur est sur le bus. 
In (16), the professor is riding the bus, while 
in (17), he is located on the roof of the bus. 
This type of ambiguity is detected in the same 
way as simple conceptual ambiguity, the only 
difference being that in the complex case, all 
the French conceptual representations do not 
have the same descriptive parts. 
6 Conclusion 
In this paper, we have described a system of 
translation for locative prepositions that uses 
Herskovits' idea of the ideal meaning of prepo- 
sitions and Lakoff's idea of ICM's. While our 
work does not prove the linguistic and psycho- 
logical theories on which it is based, it suggests 
that they can be useful in machine transla- 
tion. We chose to use conceptual knowledge 
to deal with the translation of locative prepo- 
sitions, first, because it provides an elegant so- 
lution to the problem, and second, because we 
believe that conceptual knowledge of the sort 
that we use could be useful in other cognitive 
tasks such as story understanding, vision, and 
robot planning. 
7 Acknowledgments 
We wish to thank Graeme Hirst for invaluable 
comments and detailed readings of many ver- 
sions of this work, and to gratefully acknowl- 
edge the financial support of the Department 
of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 
and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Re- 
search Council of Canada. 

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