Prolog Implementations of English and Swedish GB Grammars
(1991) In Working papers / Lund University, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics, Phonetics 38. p.169-187- Abstract
- Introduction and abstract
Government and Binding theory (Chomsky 1981, Sells 1985) plays a dominant role in current linguistics and is an almost compulsory part of the linguistics curriculum at universities. The advantage of GB is its rigorous theory, allowing only certain simple trees and transformations, supple-mented by certain simple principles and constraints. The GB approach makes it possible to characterize language in a simple way and to pinpoint the differences between languages as different settings of the parameters of the base structure, transformations and constraints. In spite of its dominance in linguistics, GB has a comparatively low status in... (More) - Introduction and abstract
Government and Binding theory (Chomsky 1981, Sells 1985) plays a dominant role in current linguistics and is an almost compulsory part of the linguistics curriculum at universities. The advantage of GB is its rigorous theory, allowing only certain simple trees and transformations, supple-mented by certain simple principles and constraints. The GB approach makes it possible to characterize language in a simple way and to pinpoint the differences between languages as different settings of the parameters of the base structure, transformations and constraints. In spite of its dominance in linguistics, GB has a comparatively low status in computational linguistics, as is witnessed by the proceedings of COL1NG and ACL (for exceptions see References). Computational linguists instead favour competing theories such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar, or eclectic variants. There is, however, a demand for computer implementa-tions of GB for linguistic and pedagogical purposes. This paper presents an experimental Prolog (LPA MacProlog) implementation of the basic features of GB, including categorial base rules for deep structures (d-structures) and transformations for movements of tense, w/z-words, noun phrases, verbs and adverbs. The movements leave traces in the surface structure (s-structure) in accordance with current theory. Both the leaves (words) of the d-structure tree and the leaves of the s-structure tree can be projected as sentences, the s-structures with or without traces. Sentences can be generated from the d-structure through the transformations or parsed by finding the d-structure after running the transformations in reverse. The English and Swedish grammars differ, as the English auxiliaries are generated in the tense slot (infl) and not is a barrier in English. Furthermore, Swedish moves all finite verbs to the second (comp) position, which is done only in questions in English, e.g. Whom did Bill like? The paper also shows how the grammars can be used for machine translation, handling differences in the d-structure by transfer rules. (Less)
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- author
- Sigurd, Bengt LU and Eeg-Olofsson, Mats LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 1991
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Working papers / Lund University, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics, Phonetics
- volume
- 38
- pages
- 169 - 187
- publisher
- Department of Linguistics, Lund University
- ISSN
- 0280-526X
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 84cce41d-bda5-4104-aaf1-a50664121c86
- alternative location
- https://journals.lub.lu.se/LWPL/article/view/2577
- date added to LUP
- 2021-07-06 11:49:40
- date last changed
- 2021-07-06 11:49:40
@misc{84cce41d-bda5-4104-aaf1-a50664121c86, abstract = {{Introduction and abstract <br/>Government and Binding theory (Chomsky 1981, Sells 1985) plays a dominant role in current linguistics and is an almost compulsory part of the linguistics curriculum at universities. The advantage of GB is its rigorous theory, allowing only certain simple trees and transformations, supple-mented by certain simple principles and constraints. The GB approach makes it possible to characterize language in a simple way and to pinpoint the differences between languages as different settings of the parameters of the base structure, transformations and constraints. In spite of its dominance in linguistics, GB has a comparatively low status in computational linguistics, as is witnessed by the proceedings of COL1NG and ACL (for exceptions see References). Computational linguists instead favour competing theories such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar, or eclectic variants. There is, however, a demand for computer implementa-tions of GB for linguistic and pedagogical purposes. This paper presents an experimental Prolog (LPA MacProlog) implementation of the basic features of GB, including categorial base rules for deep structures (d-structures) and transformations for movements of tense, w/z-words, noun phrases, verbs and adverbs. The movements leave traces in the surface structure (s-structure) in accordance with current theory. Both the leaves (words) of the d-structure tree and the leaves of the s-structure tree can be projected as sentences, the s-structures with or without traces. Sentences can be generated from the d-structure through the transformations or parsed by finding the d-structure after running the transformations in reverse. The English and Swedish grammars differ, as the English auxiliaries are generated in the tense slot (infl) and not is a barrier in English. Furthermore, Swedish moves all finite verbs to the second (comp) position, which is done only in questions in English, e.g. Whom did Bill like? The paper also shows how the grammars can be used for machine translation, handling differences in the d-structure by transfer rules.}}, author = {{Sigurd, Bengt and Eeg-Olofsson, Mats}}, issn = {{0280-526X}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Working Paper}}, pages = {{169--187}}, publisher = {{Department of Linguistics, Lund University}}, series = {{Working papers / Lund University, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics, Phonetics}}, title = {{Prolog Implementations of English and Swedish GB Grammars}}, url = {{https://journals.lub.lu.se/LWPL/article/view/2577}}, volume = {{38}}, year = {{1991}}, }