Phrase Structure Grammar Research Articles

Review of "Japanese phrase structure grammar

Review of "Japanese phrase structure grammar

Using Referent Grammar (RG) in Computer Analysis, Generation and Translation of Sentences

The paper presents Referent Grammar (RG), a version of generalized phrase structure grammar. RG uses descriptive labels for defective categories (categories tacking a constituent) instead of slash expressions and needs no null (empty, zero) categories. RG uses both functional and categorial representations and the grammar rules, written in the Prolog DCG formalism, relate these two levels. The functional representations of RG include referent variables (numbers) with noun phrases which makes it possible to keep track of the referents within the sentences and in the text. Relative clauses can be defined in a new way using these referents and the referent, enriched with grammatical features, can be used for controlling agreement. Substantial fragments of Swedish and English grammars have been implemented in RG and the print-out of a demo session shows how RG works in computerized analysis, generation and translation of Swedish and English sentences.

A note on some psychological evidence and alternative grammars

Frazier, Clifton, and Randall (1983) have obtained psycholinguistic data which, they claim, show that verb control information is not used during the initial analysis of a sentence. They argue that the data go against a Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) (Gazdar, 1981; Gazdar, 1982; Gazdar, Klein, Pullum, & Sag, 1985) but fit naturally with a Government and Binding (GB) style grammar (Chomsky, 1980, 1981). It is shown in the present paper that Frazier et al.'s argument against GPSG is flawed. Further, it is shown that one does not have to assume that verb control information is ignored during initial sentence analysis in order to account for the data.

Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories: An Introduction to Government-Binding Theory, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and Lexical-Functional Grammar

This books provides an introduction to three contemporary syntactic theories, Government-Binding Theory, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, and Lexical-Functional Grammar. In successive chapters, Sells lucidly presents and illustrates the fundamental apsects of each theory. In an introductory chapter he describes the basic syntactic concepts and assumptions shared by each theory; in the postscript, Thomas Wasow provides a more general overview of the different perspectives of these three approaches.

LECTURES ON CONTEMPORARY SYNTACTIC THEORIES: AN INTRODUCTION TO GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY, GENERALIZED PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR, AND LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR. Peter Sells. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1985. Pp. 214. $11.95 paper, $23.95 cloth.

LECTURES ON CONTEMPORARY SYNTACTIC THEORIES: AN INTRODUCTION TO GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY, GENERALIZED PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR, AND LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR. Peter Sells. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1985. Pp. 214. $11.95 paper, $23.95 cloth.

Sentential predicates in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar

Sentential predicates in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar

REFERENT GRAMMAR (RG). A GENERALIZED PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR WITH BUILT‐IN REFERENTS

Presentation des theories de la grammaire de reference, presentant la particularite d'inserer des variables de reference a l'interieur meme du formalisme et de la grammaire syntagmatique generalisee (GPSG). Implantation sur ordinateur pour l'analyse automatique de phrases en suedois

Handle NLC grammars and R. E. languages

A graph grammar is a mechanism for generating sets of graphs (called graph languages). This paper examines the generating power of a simple extension of the well studied node-label controlled graph grammars. We show that the extension, called handle NLC grammars, gives the ability to generate any recursively enumerable graph language. The proof proceeds in three steps. First we show how a handle NLC grammar can simulate a phrase-structure string grammar, where the strings that the phrase-structure grammar works on are considered to be graphs of a special form. Then we demonstrate a way of encoding graphs as strings. The final step shows how a handle NLC grammar can convert a string encoding of a graph into the graph itself.

SLR(1) and LALR(1) parsing for unrestricted grammars

Simple LR(1) and lookahead LR(1) phrase structure grammars are defined and corresponding deterministic two-pushdown automata which parse all sentences are given. These grammars include a wide variety of grammars for non context-free languages. A given phrase structure grammar is one of these types if the parse table for the associated automaton has no multiple entries. A technique for construction of this parse table is given which in the lookahead case involves elimination of inverses in a grammar for lookahead strings for LR(0) items and computation of first sets for strings of symbols in the given grammar.

Zwicky on heads

An interesting development in the last decade or so has been the increasing use that theoretical linguists have made of the notion ‘head’ – or rather, in order not to beg the question, of notions to which they have given the name ‘head’. The term has been around for a long time in linguistics, of course – for example Bloomfield uses it in relation to endocentric constructions (1933: 195), where the head is the daughter constituent which has the same distribution as the mother. Before that, Sweet had used ‘head-word’ to refer to any word to which another is subordinate (1891: 16, quoted in Matthews, 1981: 165). However, theoretical linguists made very little use of the term, or of the constellation of associated concepts, until quite recently. Its present status is due largely to work on X-bar syntax dating from Chomsky (1970), and especially to its recent manifestation in Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (Gazdar & Pullum, 1981; Gazdaret al., 1985)–and even more so in the ‘head-driven’ variant of this (Pollard, 1985). But the improved status of ‘head’ is also due to some extent to the renewed interest in dependency grammar (Anderson, 1971, 1977; Matthews, 1981; Atkinson,et al, 1982; Hudson, 1984; Nichols, 1986). All these treatments agree not only in using the term ‘head’, but also in using it to refer to the element in some construction to which all the other parts of that construction are (in some sense) subordinate.

Unrestricted gapping grammars1

Since Colmerauer's introduction of metamorphosis grammars (MGs), with their associated type‐O‐like grammar rules, there has been a desire to allow more general rule formats in logic grammars. Gap symbols were added to the MG rule by Pereira, resulting in extraposition grammars (XGs). Gaps, which are referenced by gap symbols, are sequences of zero or more unspecified symbols which may be present anywhere in a sentence or in a sentential form. However, XGs imposed restrictions on the position of gap symbols and on the contents of gaps. With the introduction of gapping grammars (GGs) by Dahl, these restrictions were removed but the rule was still required to possess a nonterminal symbol as the first symbol on the left‐hand side. This restriction is removed with the introduction of unrestricted gapping grammars. FIGG, a flexible implementation of gapping grammars, possesses a bottom‐up parser which can process a large subset of unrestricted gapping grammars. It can be used to examine the usefulness of unrestricted GGs for describing phenomena of natural languages such as free word order and partially free word/constituent order. Unrestricted gapping grammars, as implemented in FIGG, can also be used to describe grammars (or metagrammars) that utilize the gap concept, such as Gazdar's generalized phrase structure grammars.

A phrase-structure grammar for German passives

Personal and impersonal variants of the German werden passives are examined and argued to be (1) subjectless in the impersonal case and (2) lexically formed. A rule introducing these is formulated in GPSG and shown to account for (1) the evidence that indicates that impersonal passives are subjectless, in particular, the behavior of matrix-initial zs; and (2) the evidence that indicates a lexical rule, in particular (a) the various constituent structures in which passive participles and auxiliaries participate; (b) the admission of lexical exceptions; and (c) the behavior of reflexives in passives (in one variety of German). Illustrative derivations of personal and impersonal passives are provided.

Coordination and how to distinguish categories

In this paper we have presented a detailed treatment of key problems in the syntax of coordination in English which goes well beyond previous treatments in the breadth of its coverage. The separation of immediate dominance rules from linear precedence rules had played an essential role in our analysis. It is this aspect of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar that allows the full range of conjunctions in English to be treated in a unified manner using a small set of constructs. This same factoring of dominance and ordering information is what allows us to account for such problems as the peculiar properties of the coordination of embedded clauses and NPs, as we have shown. In addition, it is the interplay of various independently motivated principles in GPSG, such as the Head Feature Convention and the Foot Feature Principle, that enable one to derive, rather than stipulate, a solution to such long-standing problems as the facts commonly discussed in terms of the Coordinate Structure Constraint and the Across-the-Board Convention. Over twenty years ago, the syntax of coordination was a key topic in the discussions that led to the widespread acceptance of transformational grammar. It is curious, then, that even today no version of transformational grammar has succeeded in explaining, and often not even in describing, well-known and very basic facts about coordination (e.g., the fact that arbitrary tensed VPs can coordinate with each other). Moreover, the various instances of coordination of unlike categories, which we have provided an account of without appeal to any ancillary devices or ad hoc principles, have received no serious analysis within the transformational tradition. Of course, much remains to be done on the grammar of coordinate constructions. Among the problems we have addressed insufficiently or not at all are the precise formulation of the syntax and semantics of non-constituent ellipsis, the treatment of ‘right node raising’ constructions, and the semantic peculiarities of N1-coordination discussed by Bergmann (1982). Nevertheless, the present paper improves on earlier generative treatments of coordination by broadening the coverage while at the same time stipulating less.

Svenska nominalfraser och kontext-fri grammatik

Swedish noun-phrases of the form (Det) (Adj)* N are examined in the light of recent work in generalized phrase-structure grammar. It is argued that simple generalizations about the phrase-structure of these NPs are lost by trying to account for the precise morphological possibilities by using phrase-structure rules mentioning categories marked with morphological features. What could be accounted for by two rules must be broken down into subcases which need seven rules, thereby obscuring the overall syntactic structure of the NPs. An alternative is suggested which maintains the simple syntax which generates morphologically ill-formed NPs but only allows morphologically well-formed ones to be interpreted. It is suggested that this system can be constrained so as to generate only context-free languages.

Direct parsing of ID/LP grammars

The Immediate Dominance/Linear Precedence (ID/LP) formalism is a recent extension of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) (Gazdar and Pullum, 1982; Gazdar and Pullum, 1981) designed to perform some of the tasks previously assigned to metarules - for example, modeling the word-order characteristics of so-called free-word-order languages. (See, e.g., Stucky, 1981; Pullum, 1982; Uszkoreit, 1982.) It allows a simple specification of classes of rules that differ only in constituent order. ID/LP grammars (as well as metarule grammars) have been proposed for use in parsing by expanding them into equivalent context-free grammars (Gazdar and Pullum, 1982; Thompson, 1982). We develop a parsing algorithm, based on the algorithm of Earley, for parsing ID/LP grammars directly, circumventing the initial expansion phase. A proof of correctness of the algorithm is supplied. We also discuss some aspects of the time complexity of the algorithm and some formal properties associated with 1D/LP grammars and their relationship to context-free grammars.

Generating language from conceptual graphs

Conceptual graphs are a semantic representation that has a direct mapping to natural language. This article presents a universal algorithm for scanning the graphs, together with a version of augmented phrase-structure grammar for specifying the syntax of particular languages. When combined with a specific grammar, the universal algorithm determines a mapping from graphs to language with several important properties: multiple surface structures may be generated from a common underlying structure, constraints on the mapping result from the connectivity of the graphs rather than ad hoc assumptions, and the graphs combined with phrase-structure rules enforce context-sensitive conditions.

A note on the use of lamda conversion in generalized phrase structure grammars

The restrictive grammatical format suggested in GPSG provides an extremely interesting alternative to transformational approaches to grammar. However, we have seen that the way the grammar is currently organized, it will in certain cases fail to give the correct interpretation to sentences with displaced constituents. Whenever a left or rightward displaced constituent contains an element that can stand in an anaphoric relation with some other element in the sentence, i.e. contains a quantifier or a pronoun, the semantic rules as given do not provide the intended reading. It should be made clear, however, that this shortcoming pertains to one particular type of GPSG, namely one whose interpretation procedures make use of lambda abstraction. The problematic cases addressed here do not by themselves invalidate the syntactic framework of a GPSG. It seems quite plausible that one could construct a semantics that does not depend on lambda conversion, in which case the problem addressed in this note is presumably no longer relevant. One such proposal is put forward in Cooper (forthcoming) where a non-movement syntax is combined with interpretation procedures that do not involve translation into a lambda calculus.

DIAGRAM

An explanatory overview is given of DIAGRAM, a large and complex grammar used in an artificial intelligence system for interpreting English dialogue. DIAGRAM is an augmented phrase-structure grammar with rule procedures that allow phrases to inherit attributes from their constituents and to acquire attributes from the larger phrases in which they themselves are constituents. These attributes are used to set context-sensitive constraints on the acceptance of an analysis. Constraints can be imposed by conditions on dominance as well as by conditions on constituency. Rule procedures can also assign scores to an analysis to rate it as probable or unlikely. Less likely analyses can be ignored by the procedures that interpret the utterance. For every expression it analyzes, DIAGRAM provides an annotated description of the structure. The annotations supply important information for other parts of the system that interpret the expression in the context of a dialogue. Major design decisions are explained and illustrated. Some contrasts with transformational grammars are pointed out and problems that motivate a plan to use metarules in the future are discussed. (Metarules derive new rules from a set of base rules to achieve the kind of generality previously captured by transformational grammars but without having to perform transformations on syntactic analyses.)

An extension of tree adjunct grammars

A new class of tree adjunct grammars is examined which was first introduced in (Joshi et al., 1975). Termed extended tree adjunct grammars, they provide for a more flexible, localized notion of adjunction than is possible within the context of standard tree adjunct grammars. In fact, this new class is more powerful than that of standard tree adjunct grammars since the latter is properly included in the former. The study of extended tree adjunct grammars is motivated by several linguistic considerations relating to weaknesses in the power of standard tree adjunct grammars. First, standard tree adjunct grammars, which can be used to compose the phrase structure grammar of the base component of a Chomsky-like transformational grammar, are not well suited to account for certain aspects of language structure such as the establishment and confirmation of selectional restrictions. Second, since the relational and categorical aspects of structure are simultaneously entailed by the process of adjunction in standard tree adjunct grammars, it is difficult to study each separately. Finally, standard tree adjunct grammars by their very nature do not admit a satisfactory description of the concept of the center of a constituent. Two major results concerning extended tree adjunct grammars are the primary focus of this article. The first and foremost is that any recognizable set can be realized as the tree set of such a grammar. The second is that a special form of automaton, called a deterministic linear bounded tree automaton, is sufficient to recognize this new class of tree adjunct grammars.

Differentiation and Syntax in the Evolution of Behavioral Flexibility

Differentiation and Syntax in the Evolution of Behavioral Flexibility