The biological nature of human language

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Language Analysis In Schisma

Introduction schisma is a research project that is concerned with the development of a natural language accessible theatre information and booking system. In this project two research approaches can be distinguished. One approach is devoted to theoretical research in the areas syntax, semantics and pragmatics.Research on syntax has been conducted on a unifying parsing approach [7], left and head corner grammars [6], on stochastic context-free grammars [1] and on unification grammar parsing [2][4]. Research on semantics and pragmatics has been conducted on dialogue act classification [3] and from a logical point of view [5]. The other approach is more practically oriented in that it is more focused on the realisation of a fully functional prototype of the SCHISMA system. To this purpose, in the past, the interface development system Natural Language tm has been used for implementing a schisma prototype, a Wizard of Oz e

Beyond keywords: automated question answering on the web

Beyond Google, emerging question-answering systems respond to natural-language queries

Are Very Large Context-Free Grammars Tractable?

In this paper, we present a method which, in practice, allows to use parsers for languages defined by very large context-free grammars (over a million symbol occurrences). The idea is to split the parsing process in two passes. A first pass computes a sub-grammar which is a specialized part of the large grammar selected by the input text and various filtering strategies. The second pass is a traditional parser which works with the subgrammar and the input text. This approach is validated by practical experiments performed on a Earley-like parser running on a test set with two large context-free grammars.

Learning Lambek grammars from proof frames

A revised version will appear in a volume in honour of Lambek 90th birthdayInternational audienceIn addition to their limpid interface with semantics, categorial grammars enjoy another important property: learnability. This was first noticed by Buskowsky and Penn and further studied by Kanazawa, for Bar-Hillel categorial grammars. What about Lambek categorial grammars? In a previous paper we showed that product free Lambek grammars where learnable from structured sentences, the structures being incomplete natural deductions. These grammars were shown to be unlearnable from strings by Foret and Le Nir. In the present paper we show that Lambek grammars, possibly with product, are learnable from proof frames that are incomplete proof nets. After a short reminder on grammatical inference á la Gold, we provide an algorithm that learns Lambek grammars with product from proof frames and we prove its convergence. We do so for 1-valued also known as rigid Lambek grammars with product, since standard techniques can extend our result to $k$-valued grammars. Because of the correspondence between cut-free proof nets and normal natural deductions, our initial result on product free Lambek grammars can be recovered. We are sad to dedicate the present paper to Philippe Darondeau, with whom we started to study such questions in Rennes at the beginning of the millennium, and who passed away prematurely. We are glad to dedicate the present paper to Jim Lambek for his 90 birthday: he is the living proof that research is an eternal learning process