Alvey Icl Workshop On Linguistic Theory And Computer Applications

Alvey/ICL Workshop on Linguistic Theory and Computer Applications

Lexical Functional Grammar

Volume 34 of Syntax and Semantics is a thorough and accessible overview and introduction to Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a theory of the content and representation of different aspects of linguistic structure and the relations that hold between them. The book motivates and describes the two syntactic structures of LFG: surface phrasal organization is represented by a context-free phrase structure tree, and more abstract functional syntactic relations like subject and object are represented separately, at functional structure.The book also presents a theory of semantics and the syntax-semantics interface in which the meaning of an utterance is obtained via deduction from semantic premises contributed by its parts. Clear explication of the formal aspects of the theory is provided throughout, and differences between LFG and other linguistic theories are explored. The theory is illustrated by the analysis of a varied set of linguistic phenomena, including modification, control, anaphora, coordination, and long-distance dependencies. Besides its interest to linguists, LFG also has practical applications in computational linguistics and computer science.This book offers thorough overview of the state of the art in Lexical Functional Grammar. It presents clear explanation of the formal tools of the theory. It also offers introduction to the "glue" semantics, a theory of the syntax-semantics interface. It also presents in-depth syntactic and semantic analysis of a variety of linguistic constructions.

Natural Language Parsing and Linguistic Theories

presupposition fails, we now give a short introduction into Unification Grammar. Since all implementations discussed in this volume use PROLOG (with the exception of BlockjHaugeneder), we felt that it would also be useful to explain the difference between unification in PROLOG and in UG. After the introduction to UG we briefly summarize the main arguments for using linguistic theories in natural language processing. We conclude with a short summary of the contributions to this volume. UNIFICATION GRAMMAR 3 Feature Structures or Complex Categories. Unification Grammar was developed by Martin Kay (Kay 1979). Martin Kay wanted to give a precise defmition (and implementation) of the notion of 'feature'. Linguists use features at nearly all levels of linguistic description. In phonetics, for instance, the phoneme b is usually described with the features 'bilabial', 'voiced' and 'nasal'. In the case of b the first two features get the value +, the third (nasal) gets the value -. Feature value pairs in phonology are normally represented as a matrix. bilabial: + voiced: + I nasal: - [Feature matrix for b.] In syntax features are used, for example, to distinguish different noun classes. The Latin noun 'murus' would be characterized by the following feature-value pairs: gender: masculin, number: singular, case: nominative, pred: murus. Besides a matrix representation one frequently fmds a graph representation for feature value pairs. The edges of the graph are labelled by features. The leaves denote the value of a feature.