Message-Passing Protocols for Real-World Parsing -- An Object-Oriented Model and its Preliminary Evaluation

We argue for a performance-based design of natural language grammars and their associated parsers in order to meet the constraints imposed by real-world NLP. Our approach incorporates declarative and procedural knowledge about language and language use within an object-oriented specification framework. We discuss several message-passing protocols for parsing and provide reasons for sacrificing completeness of the parse in favor of efficiency based on a preliminary empirical evaluation.Comment: 12 pages, uses epsfig.st

Strategic programming on graph rewriting systems

We describe a strategy language to control the application of graph rewriting rules, and show how this language can be used to write high-level declarative programs in several application areas. This language is part of a graph-based programming tool built within the port-graph transformation and visualisation environment PORGY.Comment: In Proceedings IWS 2010, arXiv:1012.533

Uniform Representations for Syntax-Semantics Arbitration

Psychological investigations have led to considerable insight into the working of the human language comprehension system. In this article, we look at a set of principles derived from psychological findings to argue for a particular organization of linguistic knowledge along with a particular processing strategy and present a computational model of sentence processing based on those principles. Many studies have shown that human sentence comprehension is an incremental and interactive process in which semantic and other higher-level information interacts with syntactic information to make informed commitments as early as possible at a local ambiguity. Early commitments may be made by using top-down guidance from knowledge of different types, each of which must be applicable independently of others. Further evidence from studies of error recovery and delayed decisions points toward an arbitration mechanism for combining syntactic and semantic information in resolving ambiguities. In order to account for all of the above, we propose that all types of linguistic knowledge must be represented in a common form but must be separable so that they can be applied independently of each other and integrated at processing time by the arbitrator. We present such a uniform representation and a computational model called COMPERE based on the representation and the processing strategy.Comment: 7 pages, uses cogsci94.sty macr

TDL--- A Type Description Language for Constraint-Based Grammars

This paper presents \tdl, a typed feature-based representation language and inference system. Type definitions in \tdl\ consist of type and feature constraints over the boolean connectives. \tdl\ supports open- and closed-world reasoning over types and allows for partitions and incompatible types. Working with partially as well as with fully expanded types is possible. Efficient reasoning in \tdl\ is accomplished through specialized modules.Comment: Will Appear in Proc. COLING-9

On Language Processors and Software Maintenance

This work investigates declarative transformation tools in the context of software maintenance. Besides maintenance of the language specification, evolution of a software language requires the adaptation of the software written in that language as well as the adaptation of the software that transforms software written in the evolving language. This co-evolution is studied to derive automatic adaptations of artefacts from adaptations of the language specification. Furthermore, AOP for Prolog is introduced to improve maintainability of language specifications and derived tools.Die Arbeit unterstützt deklarative Transformationswerkzeuge im Kontext der Softwarewartung. Neben der Wartung der Sprachbeschreibung erfordert die Evolution einer Sprache sowohl die Anpassung der Software, die in dieser Sprache geschrieben ist als auch die Anpassung der Software, die diese Software transformiert. Diese Koevolution wird untersucht, um automatische Anpassungen von Artefakten von Anpassungen der Sprachbeschreibungen abzuleiten. Weiterhin wird AOP für Prolog eingeführt, um die Wartbarkeit von Sprachbeschreibungen und den daraus abgeleiteten Werkzeugen zu erhöhen