1,419 research outputs found
An earley parsing algorithm for range concatenation grammars
We present a CYK and an Earley-style algorithm for parsing Range Concatenation Grammar (RCG), using the deductive parsing framework. The characteristic property of the Earley parser is that we use a technique of range boundary constraint propagation to compute the yields of non-terminals as late as possible. Experiments show that, compared to previous approaches, the constraint propagation helps to considerably decrease the number of items in the chart
Mild context-sensitivity and tuple-based generalizations of context-free grammar
This paper classifies a family of grammar formalisms that extend context-free grammar by talking about tuples of terminal strings, rather than independently combining single terminal words into larger single phrases. These include a number of well-known formalisms, such as head grammar and linear context-free rewriting systems, but also a new formalism, (simple) literal movement grammar, which strictly extends the previously known formalisms, while preserving polynomial time recognizability. The descriptive capacity of simple literal movement grammars is illustrated both formally through a weak generative capacity argument and in a more practical sense by the description of conjunctive cross-serial relative clauses in Dutch. After sketching a complexity result and drawing a number of conclusions from the illustrations, it is then suggested that the notion of mild context-sensitivity currently in use, that depends on the rather loosely defined concept of constant growth, needs a modification to apply sensibly to the illustrated facts; an attempt at such a revision is proposed
Un algorithme d'analyse de type earley pour grammaires à concaténation d'intervalles
Nous présentons ici différents algorithmes d’analyse pour grammaires à concaténation d’intervalles (Range Concatenation Grammar, RCG), dont un nouvel algorithme de type Earley, dans le paradigme de l’analyse déductive. Notre travail est motivé par l’intérêt porté récemment à ce type de grammaire, et comble un manque dans la littérature existante.We present several different parsing algorithms for Range Concatenation Grammar (RCG), inter alia an entirely novel Earley-style algorithm, using the deductive parsing framework. Our work is motivated by recent interest in range concatenation grammar in general and fills a gap in the existing literature
A Simple Uniform Semantics for Concatenation-based Grammar
We define a more formal version of literal movement grammar (LMG) as outlined in [Gro95c], in such a way that
it provides a simple framework that incorporates a large family of grammar formalisms (Head Grammar [Pol84],
LCFRS, [Wei88]), PMCFG, [KNSK92] and String Attributed Grammars [Eng86]). The semantics is (both in
rewriting and least fixed point definitions) simple and elegant, and sheds some new light on shared properties of
the mentioned formalisms. We then define a restricted version called simple LMG and show that it generates
languages that are not mildly context sensitive, yet preserves the polynomial time recognition property of LCFRS
Pere Alberch's developmental morphospaces and the evolution of cognition
In this article we argue for an extension of Pere Alberch's notion of developmental morphospace into the realm of cognition and introduce the notion of cognitive phenotype as a new tool for the evolutionary and developmental study of cognitive abilities
Evaluating Transformer's Ability to Learn Mildly Context-Sensitive Languages
Despite that Transformers perform well in NLP tasks, recent studies suggest
that self-attention is theoretically limited in learning even some regular and
context-free languages. These findings motivated us to think about their
implications in modeling natural language, which is hypothesized to be mildly
context-sensitive. We test Transformer's ability to learn a variety of mildly
context-sensitive languages of varying complexities, and find that they
generalize well to unseen in-distribution data, but their ability to
extrapolate to longer strings is worse than that of LSTMs. Our analyses show
that the learned self-attention patterns and representations modeled dependency
relations and demonstrated counting behavior, which may have helped the models
solve the languages
Abstract syntax as interlingua: Scaling up the grammatical framework from controlled languages to robust pipelines
Syntax is an interlingual representation used in compilers. Grammatical Framework (GF) applies the abstract syntax idea to natural languages. The development of GF started in 1998, first as a tool for controlled language implementations, where it has gained an established position in both academic and commercial projects. GF provides grammar resources for over 40 languages, enabling accurate generation and translation, as well as grammar engineering tools and components for mobile and Web applications. On the research side, the focus in the last ten years has been on scaling up GF to wide-coverage language processing. The concept of abstract syntax offers a unified view on many other approaches: Universal Dependencies, WordNets, FrameNets, Construction Grammars, and Abstract Meaning Representations. This makes it possible for GF to utilize data from the other approaches and to build robust pipelines. In return, GF can contribute to data-driven approaches by methods to transfer resources from one language to others, to augment data by rule-based generation, to check the consistency of hand-annotated corpora, and to pipe analyses into high-precision semantic back ends. This article gives an overview of the use of abstract syntax as interlingua through both established and emerging NLP applications involving GF
On TAG and Multicomponent TAG Parsing
The notion of mild context-sensitivity is an attempt to express the formal power needed to define the syntax of natural languages. However, all incarnati- ons of mildly context-sensitive formalisms are not equivalent. On the one hand, near the bottom of the hierarchy, we find tree adjoining grammars and, on the other hand, near the top of the hierarchy, we find multicomponent tree adjoining grammars. This paper proposes a polynomial parse time method for these two tree rewriting formalisms. This method uses range concatenation grammars as a high-level intermediate definition formalism, and yields several algorithms. Range concatenation grammar is a syntactic formalism which is both powerful, in so far as it extends linear context-free rewriting systems, and efficient, in so far as its sentences can be parsed in polynomial time. We show that any unrestricted tree adjoining grammar can be transformed into an equivalent range concatenation grammar which can be parsed in O(n6) time, and, moreover, if the input tree adjoining grammar has some restricted form, its parse time decreases to O(n5). We generalize one of these algorithms in order to process multicomponent tree adjoining grammars. We show some upper bounds on their parse times, and we introduce a hierarchy of restricted forms which can be parsed more efficiently. Our approach aims at giving both a new insight into the multicomponent adjunction mechanism and at providing a practical implementation scheme
Algebraic dependency grammar
We propose a mathematical formalism called Algebraic Dependency Grammar with applications to formal linguistics and to formal language theory. Regarding formal linguistics we aim to address the problem of grammaticality with special attention to cross-linguistic cases. In the field of formal language theory this formalism provides a new perspective allowing an algebraic classification of languages. Notably our approach suggests the existence of so-called anti-classes of languages associated to certain classes of languages.
Our notion of a dependency grammar is as of a definition of a set of well-constructed dependency trees (we call this algebraic governance) and a relation which associates word-orders to dependency trees (we call this algebraic linearization).
In relation to algebraic governance, we define a manifold which is a set of dependency trees satisfying an agreement condition throughout a pattern, which is the algebraic form of a collection of syntactic addresses over the dependency tree. A boolean condition on the words formalizes the notion of agreement.
In relation to algebraic linearization, first we observe that the notion of projectivity is quintessentially that certain substructures of a dependency tree always form an interval in its linearization. So we have to establish well what is a substructure; we see again that patterns proportion the key, generalizing the notion of projectivity with recursive linearization procedures.
Combining the above modules we have the formalism: an algebraic dependency grammar is a manifold together with a linearization.
Notice that patterns sustain both manifolds and linearizations. We study their interrelation in terms of a new algebraic classification of classes of languages.
We highlight the main contributions of the thesis. Regarding mathematical linguistics, algebraic dependency grammar considers trees and word-order different modules in the architecture, which allows description of languages with varied word-order. Ellipses are permitted; this issue is usually avoided because it makes some formalisms non-decidable.
We differentiate linguistic phenomena structurally by their algebraic description. Algebraic dependency grammar permits observance of affinity between linguistic constructions which seem superficially different.
Regarding formal language theory, a new system for understanding a very large family of languages is presented which permits observation of languages in broader contexts. We identify a new class named anti-context-free languages containing constructions structurally symmetric to context-free languages. Informally we could say that context-free languages are well-parenthesized, while anti-context-free languages are cross-serial-parenthesized. For example copy languages and respectively languages are anti-context-free.Es proposa un formalisme matemà tic anomenat Gramà tica de Dependències Algebraica amb aplicacions a la lingüÃstica formal i a la teoria de llenguatges formals. Pel que fa a la lingüÃstica formal es pretén abordar el problema de la gramaticalitat, amb un èmfasi especial en la transversalitat, això és, que el formalisme sigui apte per a un bon nombre de llengües. En el camp dels llenguatges formals aquest formalisme proporciona una nova perspectiva que permet una classificació algebraica dels llenguatges. Aquest enfocament suggereix a més a més l'existència de les aquà anomenades anti-classes de llenguatges associades a certes classes de llenguatges. La nostra idea d'una gramà tica de dependències és en un conjunt de sintagmes ben construïts (d'això en diem recció algebraica) i una relació que associa ordres de paraules als sintagmes d'aquest conjunt (d'això en diem linearització algebraica). Pel que fa a la recció algebraica, introduïm el concepte de varietat sintà ctica com el conjunt de sintagmes que satisfan una concordança sobre un determinat patró. Un patró és un conjunt d'adreces sintà ctiques descrit algebraicament. La concordança es formalitza a través d'una condició booleana sobre el vocabulari. En relació amb linearització algebraica, en primer lloc, observem que l'essencial de la noció clà ssica de projectivitat rau en el fet que certes subestructures d'un arbre de dependències formen sempre un interval en la seva linearització. Aixà doncs, primer hem d'establir bé que vol dir subestructura. Un cop més veiem que els patrons en proporcionen la clau, tot generalitzant la noció de projectivitat a través d'un procediment recursiu de linearització. Tot unint els dos mòduls anteriors ja tenim el nostre formalisme a punt: una gramà tica de dependències algebraica és una varietat sintà ctica juntament amb una linearització. Notem que els patrons són a la base de tots dos mòduls: varietats i linearitzacions, aixà que resulta del tot natural estudiar-ne la interrelació en termes d'un nou sistema de classificació algebraica de classes de llenguatges. Destaquem les principals contribucions d'aquesta tesi. Pel que fa a la matemà tica lingüÃstica, la gramà tica de dependències algebraica considera els arbres i l'ordre de les paraules diferents mòduls dins l'arquitectura la qual cosa permet de descriure llenguatges amb una gran varietat d'ordre. L'ús d'el·lipsis és permès; aquesta qüestió és normalment evitada en altres formalismes per tal com la possibilitat d'el·lipsis fa que els models es tornin no decidibles. El nostre model també ens permet classificar estructuralment fenòmens lingüÃstics segons la seva descripció algebraica, aixà com de copsar afinitats entre construccions que semblen superficialment diferents. Pel que fa a la teoria dels llenguatges formals, presentem un nou sistema de classificació que ens permet d'entendre els llenguatges en un context més ampli. Identifiquem una nova classe que anomenem llenguatges anti-lliures-de-context que conté construccions estructuralment simètriques als llenguatges lliures de context. Informalment podrÃem dir que els llenguatges lliures de context estan ben parentetitzats, mentre que els anti-lliures-de-context estan parentetitzats segons dependències creuades en sèrie. En són mostres d'aquesta classe els llenguatges còpia i els llenguatges respectivament.Postprint (published version
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