Constraint Logic Programming for Natural Language Processing

This paper proposes an evaluation of the adequacy of the constraint logic programming paradigm for natural language processing. Theoretical aspects of this question have been discussed in several works. We adopt here a pragmatic point of view and our argumentation relies on concrete solutions. Using actual contraints (in the CLP sense) is neither easy nor direct. However, CLP can improve parsing techniques in several aspects such as concision, control, efficiency or direct representation of linguistic formalism. This discussion is illustrated by several examples and the presentation of an HPSG parser.Comment: 15 pages, uuencoded and compressed postscript to appear in Proceedings of the 5th Int. Workshop on Natural Language Understanding and Logic Programming. Lisbon, Portugal. 199

Property Grammars: a Fully Constraint-Based Theory

This paper presents the basis of Property Grammars, a fully constraint-based theory. In this approach, all kinds of linguistic information is represented by means of constraints. The constraint system constitutes then the core of the theory: it is the grammar, but it also constitutes, after evaluation for a given input, its description. Property Grammars is then a non-generative theory in the sense that no structure has to be build, only constraints are used both to represent linguistic information and to describe inputs. This paper describes the basic notions used in PG and proposes an account of long-distance dependencies, illustrating the expressive power of the formalism

Constraints: an operational framework for Constructions Grammars

International audienceUsually, linguistic theories make use of a hierarchical representation of syntactic information. Even when no relation with tree-like structures is explicit, as for HPSG (cf. [Sag99]) or Construction Grammars (see for example [Kay99]), a structure is described in terms of a hierarchy. This aspect is reinforced by lexicalization: representing syntactic information at the lexical level comes with feature localization in terms of position into a hierarchy, feature propagation being controlled through the head/mother structure. This conception, close to the generative way of representing information, is very rigid in the sense that building a hierarchical structure is a pre-requisite and one cannot say anything about syntactic properties of non-canonical (not to say non-grammatical) utterances. Construction grammars also suffer from this problem. Moreover, for the same reasons, the only way to represent local constraints is sub-constructions inheriting from higher level frames

Meta-level constraints for linguistic domain interaction

International audienceThis paper presents a technique for the representation and the implementation of inter- action relations between di erent domains of linguistic analysis. This solution relies on the localization of the linguistic objects in the context. The relations are then implemented by means of interaction constraints, each domain information being expressed independently

A general scheme for broad-coverage multimodal annotation

International audienceWe present in this paper a formal and computational scheme in the perspective of broad-coverage multimodal annotation. We propose in particular to introduce the notion of annotation hypergraphs in which primary and secondary data are represented by means of the same structure

Constraints: an operational framework for Constructions Grammars

International audienceUsually, linguistic theories make use of a hierarchical representation of syntactic information. Even when no relation with tree-like structures is explicit, as for HPSG (cf. [Sag99]) or Construction Grammars (see for example [Kay99]), a structure is described in terms of a hierarchy. This aspect is reinforced by lexicalization: representing syntactic information at the lexical level comes with feature localization in terms of position into a hierarchy, feature propagation being controlled through the head/mother structure. This conception, close to the generative way of representing information, is very rigid in the sense that building a hierarchical structure is a pre-requisite and one cannot say anything about syntactic properties of non-canonical (not to say non-grammatical) utterances. Construction grammars also suffer from this problem. Moreover, for the same reasons, the only way to represent local constraints is sub-constructions inheriting from higher level frames

Vers une théorie cognitive de la langue basée sur les contraintes

International audienceCet article fournit des éléments d'explication pour la description des relations entre les différents domaines de l'analyse linguistique. Il propose une architecture générale en vue d'une théorie formée de plusieurs niveaux : d'un côté les grammaires de chacun des domaines et de l'autre des relations spécifiant les interactions entre ces domaines. Dans cette approche, chacun des domaines est porteur d'une partie de l'information, celle-ci résultant également de l'interaction entre les domaines

Towards a Quantitative Theory of Variability: Language, brain and computation

Relations between di erent components of linguistic analysis, such as prosody, morphol- ogy, syntax, semantics, discourse, etc. remains a problem for a systematic description (see [Blache03]). However, this is a main challenge not only from a theoretical point of view, but also for natural language processing, especially in human/machine communication systems or speech processing (e.g. synthesis). Several phenomena highlighting such relations has been described. This is typically the case for relations existing between prosody and syntax (see [Selkirk84], [DiCristo85] or [Bear90]). However, explanations are often empirical and excep-tionally given in the perspective of an actual theory of language. It is for example possible to specify some relations existing between topicalization and syllable duration (cf. [Doetjes02]) or between prosodic architecture and discourse organization after focus (cf. [DiCristo99]). However, the modularity perspective, which relies on the independence of linguistic compo- nents, remains the rule in this kind of description and does not support a global vision of the problem