# ACE Parse/Generation round-tripping "unknown" and synonyms **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [May 24, 2023, 7:56pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/ace-parse-generation-round-tripping-unknown-and-synonyms/931 "2023-05-24T19:56:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EricZinda](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@EricZinda](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/EricZinda)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2023, 7:56pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/ace-parse-generation-round-tripping-unknown-and-synonyms/931/1 "2023-05-24T19:56:21Z")
I am experimenting with a templating system that uses the ERG to generate phrases with the noun phrase replaced. Step 1 is to use ACE to parse a phrase and then see if ACE will regenerate the same phrase back. I am testing using the “fict” (fiction) COCA corpus sample from [here](https://www.corpusdata.org/formats.asp). My results so far with two questions below: > These all round-tripped properly: > > The vampires didn’t get him. > FANS GATHERED TODAY AT the Los Angeles grave of dead rocker Tom Paine on the twenty-fourth anniversary of his death. > Paine, lead singer of the Seventies group Commonsense, has been called The First Goth. All of those phrases generated at least one MRS that, when fed through ACE to generate, generated the original phrase (when capitalization was ignored). > Won’t Generate due to nns\_u\_unknown: The fans, who left black roses and paperback copies of Dracula, were a mix of aging baby boomers and newer acolytes, like this young gothette `_acolytes/nns_u_unknown` is part of all the MRS alternatives so generation won’t work as discussed [here in another post](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/how-to-generate-english-sentence-from-a-parse-having-nn-u-unknown-jj-u-unknown/851). The fix described there should address this. > None of the MRSs from these will generate: > > Blond girl, black garb and eyeliner, long blond hair. > His death. > What? > Pathetic and broke? > Of a heroin overdose in a cheap motel? > Naive. > Johnny Goldberg ( former rhythm guitarist, Commonsense ) : We were so sincere then. ACE won’t generate any of the MRS documents any of those phrases output. I _believe_ that the `unknown` predication is what is preventing generation since I haven’t seen it work on anything. Is this the same problem that is discussed [in this post](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/using-ace-via-pydelphin-to-generate-fragments/779) and I just need to use a different root for generating fragments? > Won’t Round-Trip: What is it about Tom Paine that attracts your generation? ACE Gets close to generating the original text but never generates “that”, instead uses “which does”, so the best I get is: MRS 1, GEN 1: What is it about Tom Paine which does attract your generation? Is there a fix for getting the generator to generate the synonyms for things like “that” ↔ “which does”? ---
**Author:** ![EricZinda](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@EricZinda](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/EricZinda)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2023, 12:16am UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/ace-parse-generation-round-tripping-unknown-and-synonyms/931/2 "2023-05-25T00:16:31Z")
> [@EricZinda](#): > > ACE won’t generate any of the MRS documents any of those phrases output. I _believe_ that the `unknown` predication is what is preventing generation since I haven’t seen it work on anything. > > Is this the same problem that is discussed [in this post](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/using-ace-via-pydelphin-to-generate-fragments/779) and I just need to use a different root for generating fragments? I answered one of my questions: Yes, passing “-r root\_frag” to ACE does fix the fragment generation as described in that post. Still would love to know if there is a way to generate alternatives like “that” \<–\> “which does”, though ---
**Author:** ![sweaglesw](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@sweaglesw](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/sweaglesw)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2023, 7:39am UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/ace-parse-generation-round-tripping-unknown-and-synonyms/931/3 "2023-05-25T07:39:13Z")
> [@EricZinda](#): > > Still would love to know if there is a way to generate alternatives like “that” \<–\> “which does”, though This seems to be a deficiency in the ERG trigger rules – a question I hope @dan will pick up? I poked around a little bit and found that the semantically vacuous word that’s required – `that_r` – is indeed triggered, but with the wrong ARG0, causing it to be incompatible with the place it needs to fill in the sentence. `that_r` is being triggered with `that_rel_rule1`, which is a spurious match: it thinks `be_v_id` is a relative clause modifying a noun whose primary EP is `relative_mod`, and as such it grabs the ARG0 of `relative_mod` as the ARG0 for `that_r`. Given the somewhat unusual scoping structure that was chosen for this analysis I won’t try to speculate on how to write an improved trigger rule.