A hybrid formalism to parse sign languages

International audienceSign Language (SL) linguistic is dependent on the expensive task of annotating. Some automation is already available for low-level information (eg. body part tracking) and the lexical level has shown significant progresses. The syntactic level lacks annotated corpora as well as complete and consistent models. This article presents a solution for the automatic annotation of SL syntactic elements. It exposes a formalism able to represent both constituency-based and dependency-based models. The first enable the representation the structures one may want to annotate, the second aims at fulfilling the holes of the first. A parser is presented and used to conduct two experiments on the solution. One experiment is on a real corpus, the other is on a synthetic corpus

Efficient deep processing of japanese

We present a broad coverage Japanese grammar written in the HPSG formalism with MRS semantics. The grammar is created for use in real world applications, such that robustness and performance issues play an important role. It is connected to a POS tagging and word segmentation tool. This grammar is being developed in a multilingual context, requiring MRS structures that are easily comparable across languages

Information Processing in a Cognitive Model of NLP

A model of the cognitive process of natural language processing has been developed using the formalism of generalized nets. Following this stage-simulating model, the treatment of information inevitably includes phases, which require joint operations in two knowledge spaces – language and semantics. In order to examine and formalize the relations between the language and the semantic levels of treatment, the language is presented as an information system, conceived on the bases of human cognitive resources, semantic primitives, semantic operators and language rules and data. This approach is applied for modeling a specific grammatical rule – the secondary predication in Russian. Grammatical rules of the language space are expressed as operators in the semantic space. Examples from the linguistics domain are treated and several conclusions for the semantics of the modeled rule are made. The results of applying the information system approach to the language turn up to be consistent with the stages of treatment modeled with the generalized net

Program Analysis Scenarios in Rascal

Rascal is a meta programming language focused on the implementation of domain-specific languages and on the rapid construction of tools for software analysis and software transformation. In this paper we focus on the use of Rascal for software analysis. We illustrate a range of scenarios for building new software analysis tools through a number of examples, including one showing integration with an existing Maude-based analysis. We then focus on ongoing work on alias analysis and type inference for PHP, showing how Rascal is being used, and sketching a hypothetical solution in Maude. We conclude with a high-level discussion on the commonalities and differences between Rascal and Maude when applied to program analysis

Specification and verification of context conditions for programming languages

Bibliography: p. 204-211.Context conditions - also called static semantics - are the constraints on computer programs that cannot be reasonably expressed by a context-free grammar, but that can be statically checked without considering the execution properties - semantics - of the program. Such conditions tend to be arbitrary and complex. This thesis presents a new specification formalism called CFF/AML. This formalism is · designed to be both useful for the specification of programming languages to an environment generator and also simple to use. The driving insight behind CFF/AML is that a language specifier conceives of the context condition checks associated with a programming language syntax description in procedural terms. CFF/AML supports this view of context condition specification, thus simplifying the task of the language specifier. CFF/AML has been formally by constructing a temporal proof system for the metalanguage. This proof system can also be used to verify CFF/AML specifications. The construction of the temporal proof system for CFF/AML uncovered a deficiency in the existing theory, namely that there was no way to prove subprograms, especially recursive subprograms, correct. The theory was extended to handle recursive subprograms. The approach developed in this thesis allows recursive subprograms to be proven correct using the same approach as was used previously for iterative constructs. This thesis makes a number of contributions to Computer Science. An approach to language specification - CFF/AML - is developed that greatly reduces the problems associated with building a language specification for input to a programming language environment generator. The theory of temporal proof systems is extended to include a methodology for handling proofs of recursive subprograms. A formal description of the CFF/AML metalanguage has been developed using temporal logic as the framework for the description. This is the first attempt to use temporal logic for such a task. As CFF/AML constructs can be dynamically scoped, this development differs from that required for statically scoped languages. We have also used this temporal proof system formally to prove that context condition specifications are correct. These proofs are an advancement on earlier work in the field of formal reasoning about context condition specification as they allow formal proof of the correctness of evaluations, as well as proving termination