Parallel Distributed Grammar Engineering for Practical Applications

Based on a detailed case study of parallel grammar development distributed across two sites, we review some of the requirements for regression testing in grammar engineering, summarize our approach to systematic competence and performance profiling, and discuss our experience with grammar development for a commercial application. If possible, the workshop presentation will be organized around a software demonstration

CHR as grammar formalism. A first report

Grammars written as Constraint Handling Rules (CHR) can be executed as efficient and robust bottom-up parsers that provide a straightforward, non-backtracking treatment of ambiguity. Abduction with integrity constraints as well as other dynamic hypothesis generation techniques fit naturally into such grammars and are exemplified for anaphora resolution, coordination and text interpretation.Comment: 12 pages. Presented at ERCIM Workshop on Constraints, Prague, Czech Republic, June 18-20, 200

An Abstract Machine for Unification Grammars

This work describes the design and implementation of an abstract machine, Amalia, for the linguistic formalism ALE, which is based on typed feature structures. This formalism is one of the most widely accepted in computational linguistics and has been used for designing grammars in various linguistic theories, most notably HPSG. Amalia is composed of data structures and a set of instructions, augmented by a compiler from the grammatical formalism to the abstract instructions, and a (portable) interpreter of the abstract instructions. The effect of each instruction is defined using a low-level language that can be executed on ordinary hardware. The advantages of the abstract machine approach are twofold. From a theoretical point of view, the abstract machine gives a well-defined operational semantics to the grammatical formalism. This ensures that grammars specified using our system are endowed with well defined meaning. It enables, for example, to formally verify the correctness of a compiler for HPSG, given an independent definition. From a practical point of view, Amalia is the first system that employs a direct compilation scheme for unification grammars that are based on typed feature structures. The use of amalia results in a much improved performance over existing systems. In order to test the machine on a realistic application, we have developed a small-scale, HPSG-based grammar for a fragment of the Hebrew language, using Amalia as the development platform. This is the first application of HPSG to a Semitic language.Comment: Doctoral Thesis, 96 pages, many postscript figures, uses pstricks, pst-node, psfig, fullname and a macros fil

Derivation without lexical rules

In Krieger and Nerbonne (1992) we showed how to get rid of LEXICAL RULES for DERIVATION, as they are explicated by Pollard and Sag (1987) in HPSG I, Ch. 8.2. We proposed a treatment of derivation not by means of traditional lexical rules but instead in terms of PRINCIPLES, RULES, and LEXICAL ENTRIES entirely in the spirit of HPSG, together with unification-based inheritance of a very sophisticated kind. One major disadvantage of this approach was the employment of complex functions in certain principles. In this paper I first extend the old approach and then show how to eliminate these functional dependencies in the domain of derivational morphology by going back to simpler ones like cons, first, and rest. But this simplification is only achieved if we assume more complex feature structures than the ones described in Krieger and Nerbonne (e.g., by introducing two different SUBCAT features) and by proposing modified versions of the old Constituent Order Principle and the Subcategorization Principle for morphology. In addition, I postulate a hierarchy of affixes which is cross-classified, for instance, according to the effects these affixes contribute to the subcategorization information of a compound word. The structure of the paper is as follows. We start with a very short introduction about the residence of word-formation rules in modern feature-based theories. After that we present our approach to derivational morphology which is distinguished in that it gives up the notion of lexical rule as a single entity (operator). We describe the structure of affixes and words (e.g., which attributes are appropriate?) and introduce the relevant principles and the rule schema of our approach to derivational morphology. The section shows how to reduce functional dependencies to a minimum at the cost of the size of our feature structures. We also present a technique which allows us to state relational dependencies as they are called by HPSG in a functional manner. In the next section we show how the whole treatment works by applying it to tough phenomena from prefixation and suffixation. The section presents many examples, which might serve as a how to guide to a practitioner. After that we explain the idea which will lead us to the affix hierarchy. We will see that the affix hierarchy is inspired by the work of HPSG on structured lexicons (i.e., by the hierarchy of lexical types). A lot of examples will again be given throughout this section. We finish the paper by summarizing our approach and by saying a few words about the topics which we will tackle next

A New Application for Raising in HPSG: Complex Prepositions

One of the most popular techniques used in HPSG-based studies to describe linguistic phenomena is the raising mechanism. Besides ordinary raising verbs or adjectives, this tool has been applied for handling verbal complexes and discontinuous constituents, among other phenomena. In this paper, a new application for raising within the HPSG paradigm will be discussed, thereby investigating data from the prepositional domain. We will analyze linguistic properties of word combinations in German consisting of a preposition, a noun, and another preposition (such as auf Grund von (‘by virtue of’)), thus arguing that raising is the most appropriate method for satisfactorily describing the crucial syntactic features which are typical for those expressions. The objective of this paper is thus to demonstrate the efficiency of the raising mechanism as used in HPSG, and therefore, to emphasize the importance of designing a satisfactory uniform theory of raising within this grammar framework

The Syntax of “Complex Prepositions” in German: An HPSG Approach

Many modern languages commonly use expressions that seem unpredictable regarding standard grammar regularities. Among these expressions, sequences consisting of a preposition, a noun, another preposition, and another noun are particularly frequent. The issue of these expressions, usually termed in linguistic literature as "complex prepositions", "phrasal prepositions" or "preposition-like word formations", can certainly be considered to be a cross-linguistic problem (On "complex prepositions" in German and in other languages see (Benes 1974), (Buscha 1984)}, (Lindqvist 1994), (Meibauer 1995), (Quirk and Mulholland 1964), (Wollmann 1996). In this paper, I will focus exclusively on German data, because they provide very explicit and convincing linguistic evidence which motivates and supports my approach. However, I assert that the analysis proposed here for German can also be applied to other languages such as Polish or English

Encoding Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammars with a Nonmonotonic Inheritance Hierarchy

This paper shows how DATR, a widely used formal language for lexical knowledge representation, can be used to define an LTAG lexicon as an inheritance hierarchy with internal lexical rules. A bottom-up featural encoding is used for LTAG trees and this allows lexical rules to be implemented as covariation constraints within feature structures. Such an approach eliminates the considerable redundancy otherwise associated with an LTAG lexicon.Comment: Latex source, needs aclap.sty, 8 page