  This paper will focus on the semantic representation of verbs in computer
systems and its impact on lexical selection problems in machine translation
(MT). Two groups of English and Chinese verbs are examined to show that lexical
selection must be based on interpretation of the sentence as well as selection
restrictions placed on the verb arguments. A novel representation scheme is
suggested, and is compared to representations with selection restrictions used
in transfer-based MT. We see our approach as closely aligned with
knowledge-based MT approaches (KBMT), and as a separate component that could be
incorporated into existing systems. Examples and experimental results will show
that, using this scheme, inexact matches can achieve correct lexical selection.
