CONTEXT-FREE GRAMMARS

Syntactic analysis (Parsing)

S NP VP

AT

NNS

VBD

NP

the

children

ate

AT

NN

the

cake

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Beyond regular languages: Context-Free Grammars

S NP VP NP Det Nominal Nominal Noun VP V

Det the Det a Noun flight V left

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Derivations

A DERIVATION of a string is a sequence of rule applications

E.g., the string a flight can be derived from the grammar above and symbol NP by the (leftmost first) derivation

NP => Det Nominal => a Nominal => a Noun => a flight

Derivations can be visualized as PARSE TREES The LANGUAGE defined by a CFG is the set of strings derivable from the start symbol S (for Sentence)

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Derivations and parse trees

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A more formal definition

A CFG is a 4-tuple <N,,P, S> consisting of

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What `context free means

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Derivations and languages

The language LG GENERATED by a CFG grammar G is the set of strings of TERMINAL symbols that can be derived from the start symbol S using the production rules in G

LG = {w | w is in * and S derives w}

The strings in LG are called GRAMMATICAL The strings not in LG are called UNGRAMMATICAL
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Grammar development

One of the most basic skills in NLE is the ability to write a CFG for some fragment of a language (e.g., the dates) Well briefly cover some of the issues to be addressed when writing small CFG grammars

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An example lexicon

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An example grammar

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A simple parse tree

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Basic types of phrases

Sentences Noun Phrases Verb phrases Prepositional phrases

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Basic types of sentences

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Noun phases: premodifiers

NP (Det) (Card) (Ord) (Quant) (AP) Nominal Det: Determiners

a flight Optional: Im looking for flights to Denver

Card: Cardinal numbers (one stop) Ord: Ordinal numbers (the first flight) Quantifiers: most flights to Denver leave in the morning AP (Adjectives): three very expensive seats

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Noun phases: postmodifiers

Nominal Noun Nominal Nominal PP (PP) (PP) Nominal Nominal GerundVP Nominal Nominal RelClause

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Types of postnominal modifiers

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Recursion

Nominal Nominal PP (PP) (PP)

Is an example of RECURSIVE rule NP NP PP VP VP PP

Other examples:

Recursion a powerful device, but could have bad consequences (see lectures on parsing)

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Recursion and VP attachment

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Coordination

NP NP and NP

John and Mary left

VP VP and VP

John talks softly and carries a big stick

Kim is a lawyer but Sandy is reading medicine.

S S and / but / S

In fact, probably English has a

XP XP and XP rule

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Agreement

This dog Those dogs *This dogs *Those dogs This dog is smart *This dog are smart *Those dogs is smart
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CFGs vs Regular languages

For many applications, finite state languages (the languages defined by FA) are appropriate Limitation of FAs: cannot count

I.e., cannot check A n B n

Example of construction showing that English is CF: long-distance dependencies

Which film did Kim say the director who we just met _ recommended _?
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The Chomsky Hierarchy

Finite-state languages (type 3)

A bC | Cb (a single NT on the right)

Context-free languages (type 2)

A BB
CAC BB Every language that can be specified by a finite algorithm

Context-sensitive languages (type 1)

Recursively enumerable languages

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Readings

Jurafsky and Martin, chapter 9 The chapters on context-free languages in

The Free Dictionary: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Contextfree%20language Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar

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