14,060 research outputs found
Modelling the development of Dutch Optional Infinitives in MOSAIC.
This paper describes a computational model which simulates the change in the use of optional infinitives that is evident in children learning Dutch as their first language. The model, developed within the framework of MOSAIC, takes naturalistic, child directed speech as its input, and analyses the distributional regularities present in the input. It slowly learns to generate longer utterances as it sees more input. We show that the developmental characteristics of Dutch children’s speech (with respect to optional infinitives) are a natural consequence of MOSAIC’s learning mechanisms and the gradual increase in the length of the utterances it produces. In contrast with Nativist approaches to syntax acquisition, the present model does not assume large amounts of innate knowledge in the child, and provides a quantitative process account of the development of optional infinitives
Multiplicative-Additive Focusing for Parsing as Deduction
Spurious ambiguity is the phenomenon whereby distinct derivations in grammar
may assign the same structural reading, resulting in redundancy in the parse
search space and inefficiency in parsing. Understanding the problem depends on
identifying the essential mathematical structure of derivations. This is
trivial in the case of context free grammar, where the parse structures are
ordered trees; in the case of categorial grammar, the parse structures are
proof nets. However, with respect to multiplicatives intrinsic proof nets have
not yet been given for displacement calculus, and proof nets for additives,
which have applications to polymorphism, are involved. Here we approach
multiplicative-additive spurious ambiguity by means of the proof-theoretic
technique of focalisation.Comment: In Proceedings WoF'15, arXiv:1511.0252
Parsing as Reduction
We reduce phrase-representation parsing to dependency parsing. Our reduction
is grounded on a new intermediate representation, "head-ordered dependency
trees", shown to be isomorphic to constituent trees. By encoding order
information in the dependency labels, we show that any off-the-shelf, trainable
dependency parser can be used to produce constituents. When this parser is
non-projective, we can perform discontinuous parsing in a very natural manner.
Despite the simplicity of our approach, experiments show that the resulting
parsers are on par with strong baselines, such as the Berkeley parser for
English and the best single system in the SPMRL-2014 shared task. Results are
particularly striking for discontinuous parsing of German, where we surpass the
current state of the art by a wide margin
Towards an implementable dependency grammar
The aim of this paper is to define a dependency grammar framework which is
both linguistically motivated and computationally parsable. See the demo at
http://www.conexor.fi/analysers.html#testingComment: 10 page
A Transition-Based Directed Acyclic Graph Parser for UCCA
We present the first parser for UCCA, a cross-linguistically applicable
framework for semantic representation, which builds on extensive typological
work and supports rapid annotation. UCCA poses a challenge for existing parsing
techniques, as it exhibits reentrancy (resulting in DAG structures),
discontinuous structures and non-terminal nodes corresponding to complex
semantic units. To our knowledge, the conjunction of these formal properties is
not supported by any existing parser. Our transition-based parser, which uses a
novel transition set and features based on bidirectional LSTMs, has value not
just for UCCA parsing: its ability to handle more general graph structures can
inform the development of parsers for other semantic DAG structures, and in
languages that frequently use discontinuous structures.Comment: 16 pages; Accepted as long paper at ACL201
Nominal juxtaposition in Australian languages: An LFG analysis
It is well known that Australian languages make heavy use of nominal juxtaposition in a wide variety of functions, but there is little discussion in the theoretical literature of how such juxtapositions should be analysed. We discuss a range of data from Australian languages illustrating how multiple nominals share a single grammatical function within the clause. We argue that such constructions should be treated syntactically as set-valued grammatical functions in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). Sets as values for functions are well-established in LFG and are used in the representation of adjuncts, and also in the representation of coordination. In many Australian languages, coordination is expressed asyndetically, that is, by nominal juxtaposition with no overt coordinator at all. We argue that the syntactic similarity of all juxtaposed constructions (ranging from coordination through a number of more appositional relations) motivates an analysis in which they are treated similarly in the syntax, but suitably distinguished in the semantics. We show how this can be achieved within LFG, providing a unified treatment of the syntax of juxtaposition in Australian languages and showing how the interface to the semantics can be quite straightforwardly defined in the modular LFG approach. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009
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