Grammar Form for Comp Research

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Linguists have developed a large number of formally precise syntactic theories, and many of them have been important tools for computational research. In this course, we will study five such systems with the goal of understanding both their perspective on syntax and its relation to parsing, production, and semantics, and will work to gain sufficient skill in using the formal systems to make them useful for computational work. The five systems we will discuss, along with classic early references, are the following: HPSG (Head-driven Phrase-structure Grammar: Pollard and Sag 1994; Sag, Wasow, and Bender 1999) CCG (Combinatory Categorial Grammar: Steedman 2000) LFG (Lexical Functional Grammar: Kaplan and Bresnan 1982, Dalrymple 2001) TAG (Tree Adjoining Grammar (Joshi 1987) Minimalist Grammars (Stabler 2001) We will spend most of our time on HPSG (with its semantic theory Minimal Recursion Semantics, MRS) and CCG. HPSG is is both widely used in computational research and influential as a framework for studying syntax. CCG is an important modern version of the classical framework of categorial grammar and supports a direct syntax-semantics interface. We will also do brief one-week overviews of LFG and TAG, and will take a look at Minimalist Grammars because they represent a formalization of the Minimalist syntax familiar to many linguists.