Practical Grammar Engineering Using HPSG

Frederik Fouvry (CoLi Saarbrücken)
Stephan Oepen (CSLI Stanford)
Melanie Siegel (DFKI Saarbrücken)

Practical

Time: 8-12 April 2002; 10:00-12:30 and 14:30-17:00
Type: Projektseminar

Description

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. Daily implementation exercises will be conducted in the freely-available LKB grammar development platform, 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.

Prerequisites

Students attending must either

Registration

Course registration will be limited, since this will be a highly interactive, hands-on course. Mail your registration to grammatikentwicklung@coli.uni-sb.de. Since the number of places is limited, attendance is compulsory after registration. The last day for registration is 4 April 2002, unless all places have been taken earlier.

Prüfungsleistung

Eine Prüfungsleistung über 2 SWS kann wie folgt erbracht werden:

Voraussetzung zur Zulassung zur Prüfungsleistung: mindestens 50% der Übungsaufgaben sollen bearbeitet werden (einzeln oder in Gruppen).

Background Reading:

Registered participants

  1. Stephanie Becker (stbe)
  2. Caren Brinckmann (cabr)
  3. Oliver Culo (culo)
  4. Doris Diedrich (dido)
  5. Sisay Fissaha (fissaha)
  6. Christine Földesi (tina)
  7. Bettina Fromkorth (befr)
  8. Ruth Fuchss (fuchss)
  9. Viera Gajdosova (viera)
  10. Stefan Girgsdies (stgi)
  11. Michael Götze (goetze)
  12. Matthias Großkloß (grokl)
  13. Micha Jellinghaus (micha)
  14. Julia Neu (june)
  15. Garance Paris (gparis)
  16. Yamile Ramírez (ramirez)
  17. Anne Schwartz (anne)
  18. Atsuko Shimada (atsh)
  19. Diana Raileanu (raileanu)
  20. Sabrina Wilske (wilske)

Course material

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Slides (PowerPoint) Slides: PostScript, PDF Slides (PowerPoint) Slides: PostScript, PDF Outlook: PostScript, PDF
Exercises 1A, 1B and 1C Exercise 2 Exercise 3A and 3B Exercise 4 and Exercise 5
Grammars 1 and 2 Grammar 3 Grammar 4 Grammar 5 Esperanto grammar
Grammar 9

This material is closely based on the LKB course material developed by Ann Copestake, Dan Flickinger, Rob Malouf, and Stephan Oepen.

Th grammar in grammar9.tgz is a sample "final" grammar, that you might get after all exercises have been completed. We put it here for your information.

Possible topics for Scheine

Before you start on a topic, come and talk to us about the language, the phenomena and the coverage. Make a test suite (a list of sentences as in test.items) and come and discuss it with us.