Experiences with the GTU grammar development environment

In this paper we describe our experiences with a tool for the development and testing of natural language grammars called GTU (German: Grammatik-Testumgebumg; grammar test environment). GTU supports four grammar formalisms under a window-oriented user interface. Additionally, it contains a set of German test sentences covering various syntactic phenomena as well as three types of German lexicons that can be attached to a grammar via an integrated lexicon interface. What follows is a description of the experiences we gained when we used GTU as a tutoring tool for students and as an experimental tool for CL researchers. From these we will derive the features necessary for a future grammar workbench.Comment: 7 pages, uses aclap.st

Type-driven natural language analysis

The purpose of this thesis is in showing how recent developments in logic programming can be exploited to encode in a computational environment the features of certain linguistic theories. We are in this way able to make available for the purpose of natural language processing sophisticated capabilities of linguistic analysis directly justified by well developed grammatical frameworks. More specifically, we exploit hypothetical reasoning, recently proposed as one of the possible directions to widen logic programming, to account for the syntax of filler-gap dependencies along the lines of linguistic theories such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar and Categorial Grammar. Moreover, we make use, for the purpose of semantic analysis of the same kind of phenomena, of another recently proposed extension, interestingly related to the previous one, namely the idea of replacing first-order terms with the more expressive λ-terms of λ-Calculus

A specification language for Lexical Functional Grammars

This paper defines a language L for specifying LFG grammars. This enables constraints on LFG's composite ontology (c-structures synchronised with f-structures) to be stated directly; no appeal to the LFG construction algorithm is needed. We use L to specify schemata annotated rules and the LFG uniqueness, completeness and coherence principles. Broader issues raised by this work are noted and discussed.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX uses eaclap.sty; Procs of Euro ACL-9

Natural language processing and advanced information management

Integrating diverse information sources and application software in a principled and general manner will require a very capable advanced information management (AIM) system. In particular, such a system will need a comprehensive addressing scheme to locate the material in its docuverse. It will also need a natural language processing (NLP) system of great sophistication. It seems that the NLP system must serve three functions. First, it provides an natural language interface (NLI) for the users. Second, it serves as the core component that understands and makes use of the real-world interpretations (RWIs) contained in the docuverse. Third, it enables the reasoning specialists (RSs) to arrive at conclusions that can be transformed into procedures that will satisfy the users' requests. The best candidate for an intelligent agent that can satisfactorily make use of RSs and transform documents (TDs) appears to be an object oriented data base (OODB). OODBs have, apparently, an inherent capacity to use the large numbers of RSs and TDs that will be required by an AIM system and an inherent capacity to use them in an effective way

Ditransitive Constructions in English and Croatian

Our claim was that ditransitive constructions and dative alternation are best explained by Cognitive Grammar since it claims that grammar is the solution that speakers have found to structure their thoughts in order to communicate them to other people. As products of speakers, the words and grammatical structures they use reflect their physical, psychological and social experiences. Our primary concern was with the phenomenon of dative alternation in English and we believe that the results of the research on native speakers of English and Croatian students of English support our claim. The answers the participants provided show that their experiences truly influence their choice of construction, i.e. that the way in which we perceive the world around us determines the language we use. Since English allows dative alternation with some 30 verbs, it is fairly common in language use which is why it was easier to test the English speaking participants. Croatian, on the other hand, allows dative alternation with only 3 verbs (8 if we count their aspectual counterparts) and the alternated construction is not as common in use as the canonical one. Moreover, the alternated construction in Croatian is subject to many semantic and pragmatic constraints (due to some inherent meanings of the verbs that allow it), which is why its use is often associated with more formal style (this was also recognized by the Croatian speaking participants who described the alternated construction as stylistically marked or pertaining to more formal situations). When it comes to dative alternation in Croatian, many of the findings by Zovko Dinković (2007) were confirmed by our research, too. However, since there is a time period of some six years between her work and ours (twelve, if we take into account her work from 2001), we showed that some of the speakers’ perception on dative alternation has changed. In our opinion, the most interesting example of that change is the use of the verb donirati (to donate) in the alternated construction. Although donirati is not one of the Croatian verbs that allow dative alternation, we found that the speakers do not dismiss the use of the verb itself in the alternated construction. It would be interesting to do some further research on this issue since it appears that the verb donirati (to donate) is becoming acceptable in the alternated construction, too. Since dative alternation in English has already been dealt with from the point of view of Cognitive Grammar, it would be useful to do some more research in this vein on the issue of dative alternation in Croatian, since the phenomenon is rare in any case-marking language, including Croatian