Introduction to Grammar Engineering Using HPSG

Frederik Fouvry, Stephan Oepen

fouvry@coli.uni-sb.de, oe@csli.stanford.edu

Scandinavian Summer School in Constraint-Based Linguistics

Trondheim, Norway, August 2001

Stefan Müller, Ivan A. Sag (Teaching Assistants)

Ann Copestake, Dan Flickinger, Rob Malouf (Close Collaborators)


a brief summary of course contents and goals;

Background information on the LinGO project at CSLI Stanford;

obtaining the LKB package (source code and binaries for certain platforms).

some photographs taken during (and after) course hours.


Summary

The implementation of linguistically-based grammars for natural languages draws on a combination of engineering skills, sound grammatical theory, and software development techniques. This course provides a hands-on introduction to the methods and tools needed for building the precise, extensible grammars required both in research and in applications. Through a combination of lectures and in-class exercises, students will investigate the implementation of constraints in morphology, syntax, and semantics, working within the unification-based lexicalist framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Topics to be addressed in the course include: the use of types and features, multiple inheritance, lexical rules, and constructions. The daily implementation exercises will be conducted in the freely-available LKB grammar development platform developed by Copestake et al, and will include experience with adding and repairing lexical types, lexical entries, lexical rules, phrase structure schemata, and compositional semantic constraints. While most of the course work will focus on small-ish grammars for English, we expect to apply our jointly acquired grammar engineering expertise to at least one other language towards the end of the week. Course registration will be limited, since this will be a highly interactive, hands-on course.


Transparencies Grammar Excercise Solution
Day 1 Grammar 1 Day 1 Solution 1
Day 2 Grammar 2 Day 2 Solution 2
Day 3 (PDF) Grammar 3 Day 3 Solution 3
  Grammar 4 Day 4 Solution 4
  Esperanto Data   Day 5  

Instructions on how to proceed once you have the files, can be found in instructions.html.


Background Reading


last modified: 11-dec-01 (oe@csli.stanford.edu)