Bilingual Word and Chunk Alignment: A Hybrid System for Amharic

252 Pages·2012·1.87 MB·English

Bilingual Word and Chunk Alignment: A
Hybrid System for Amharic and English
Saba Amsalu Teserra
A thesis submitted in ful(cid:12)llment of
the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Fakult(cid:127)at fu(cid:127)r Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft
Universit(cid:127)at Bielefeld
June 2007

1. Examiner: Prof. Dr. Dafydd Gibbon
2. Examiner: Prof. Dr. Dieter Metzing

Declaration
This thesis is submitted to the University of Bielefeld in ful(cid:12)llment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Lin-
gusitics. This thesis is entirely my own work, and except where otherwise
stated, describes my own research.
Saba Amsalu Teserra
June, 2007

Dedication
To my father

Acknowledgements
The research that has gone into this thesis has bene(cid:12)ted greatly from the
interaction that I have had with my supervisors and colleagues, as well as
friends.
Ifeelveryprivilegedtohaveworkedwithmysupervisors, DafyddGibbon,
and Dieter Metzing. To each of them I owe a great debt of gratitude for their
patience, inspiration and friendship. Dafydd, I specially thank you for giving
me this chance to come all the way to Germany and take this step in my
career. I have greatly bene(cid:12)ted from your excellence in producing ideas
instantly and your all-round deep knowledge in computational linguistics.
My regard for Dieter Metzing is enormous. Thank you for your experi-
enced help in directing me on how to approach some of the problems that I
had in my thesis. Thank you very much for the time you spent with me as
a friend and as a supervisor. You have also shared all the complex adminis-
trative and (cid:12)nancial problems I had.
I would also like to thank Henrike Wanke for her diligent support and
patience whenever I asked for it. Many thanks Ms. Wanke!
Many thanks go to my friends who are a bunch of nice people with whom
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I had lots of fun. With you guys, managing all the stress was much easier.
TheDeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)wasverygenerousingiving
me a two year scholarship. Bielefeld University also provided me with a
one year scholarship to (cid:12)nish this thesis. The Faculty of Linguistics and
Literaturehasprovidedanexcellentenvironmentformyresearchby(cid:12)nancing
my German courses.
Finally, I thank my family who have been extremely understanding and
supportive of my studies. Ribka, I particularly thank you for not being
weary of having to go through my emotional ups and downs during this time
of study. Ababa, I thank you very much for your patience, diligence and
perseverance in having to teach me when I was a little girl. I would have not
made it without you. You are also a very good father.