Computa(onal Grammar

Grammar
Can you give a good deni1on of grammar?
What is computa1onal grammar?
What is the requirement?
How can it be developed?

Grammar
We already discussed prescrip1ve, descrip1ve and
other types of grammar.
Tradi1onal grammar

Chomsky
Genera1ve Grammar :
Competence vs. performance ?

Computa(onal Grammar
Computa1onal grammar is a set of algorithms to
Dene POS tag
Iden1fy cons1tuents: phrases and sentences
Develop phrasal and sentence level context free rules.
Add addi1onal informa1on such as agreement,
gramma1cal role, theta role, sub-categoriza1on rules etc.

Major Computa1onal grammar formalisms are:

Lexical Func1onal Grammar (LFG)
Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG)
Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG)
Local Word Group (LWG)

Lexical Func(onal Grammar (LFG)

LFG was developed by Kaplan and Bresnan (1982).
As the name implies, the theory is lexical.
It provides a computa1onal formalism to extract
gramma1cal rela1ons from a sentence.
It denes two level of representa1ons:
C(ons1tuent) Structure: It represents linear and
hierarchical organiza1on of words into phrases.
F(unc1onal) Structure: It represents abstract
gramma1cal func1ons such as subject and object, as
well as abstract features such as tense and case.

Some proper(es of LFG

Lexical Theory
The rela1ons between linguis1c forms (such as
ac1ve vs. passive) are generalisa1on about the
structure of lexicon.
Func1onal theory: Subject and object

Lexical
Word play a major role.
Lexical Integrity Principle:
Morphological Composi1on does not interact with
syntac1c composi1on: the minimal unit analyzed
by the cons1tuent structure is the word and
internal morphological structure of the word is not
accessible to syntac1c processes (Bresenan and
Mchombo 1995).

 Lexicalist theory is not transforma1onal/

deriva1onal.

1.
a. Tom amused the children with his stories.
b. Fred severely cri1cized the book.
c. John doubted the proposal.
2.
a. Toms amusing the children with his stories
b. Freds severely cri1cising the book.
c. Johns doub1ng the proposal

 LFG
LFG diers from transforma1onal grammar and
rela1onal grammar.
Only one level of cons1tuent structure( c-structure)
Gramma1cal func1ons are parallel to c-structure.
Gramma1cal structures are represented in the f-
structure.
C and f structures are dierent structures.

For example: A boy gave the girl a book.

NP VP

Det N V NP NP



Det N Det N


A girl handed the baby a toy
C-structure

spec a

Subj. pred boy

pred give< subj, obj2, obj>

tense past

spec a
obj2 pred book


spec the
obj pred girl

f-structure

LFG Formalism
It has two major components:
Context free grammar which provides c structure
Func1onal specica1on which provides f structure

In the grammar of Kaplan and Brasnan (1982),

there are two special symbols:
Up-arrow: it is associated with the symbol on the lec
hand side of context free rule. It represents the f-
structure of immediately domina1ng node.
Down-arrow: it is associated with a non-terminal refers
to the f-structure with the non-terminal. It represents
the f-structure of the current c-structure node.

Consider an example A boy gave a book to the girl.

R1: a sentence contains a Noun Phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP);
f-structure for S has an aFribute subj whose value is the f-
structure of NP; the f-structure for VP and S are equal.
R2: Both NPs are op(onal , followed by preposi(onal phrase. The
NPs contribute to obj and obj2 , in the f-structure of the
sentence.

Well-formedness Condi(ons
Uniqueness: An adribute in an f-structure can have at
most one value. For example, consider f structures
for boy and a
i)
num plural num singular
pred boy spec a
ii) num singular num singular
pred boy spec a
(i) has clash in the value of adributes, so its not well-
formed.
The process of making two f-structures equal is called
unica1on.

 Unica1ons of f-structure:
num singular
pred boy
spec a\
Completeness: An f-structure is complete if it contains
all the adributes named in the arguments of its
predicate. e.g. give< ( subj, obj, obj2 )>
*A boy gave the girl.
* A boy gave.
Coherence: The gramma1cal func1on in the f-structure
must also occur in the value of predicate-argument
combina1on.
*The boy slept the book. (sleep needs only one arg.)
*The boy at the apple the girl.

Func(on and features

LFG Overview
It gives strong algorithms by which c-structure and
f-structure can be obtained for a sentence.

The parsing problem arrives at c-structure.

Limita8ons : It does not provide any algorithm
regarding ambiguity, adjuncts and op1onal theta
roles.