Abstract
Even though progress in theoretical linguistics does not necessarily
rely on the construction of working programs, a large proportion of
current research in syntactic theory is facilitated by suitable
computational tools. However, when natural language processing
applications seek to draw on the results from new developments in
theories of grammar, not only the nature of the tools has to change, but they face the challenge of reconciling the seemingly contradictory requirements of notational perspicuity and efficiency of performance. In this paper, we present a comparison and an evaluation of a number of software systems for grammar development, and argue that they are inadequate as practical tools for building wide-coverage grammars. We discuss a number of factors characteristic of this task, demonstrate how they influence the design of a suitable software environment, and describe the implementation of a system which has supported efficient development of a large computational grammar of English?
rely on the construction of working programs, a large proportion of
current research in syntactic theory is facilitated by suitable
computational tools. However, when natural language processing
applications seek to draw on the results from new developments in
theories of grammar, not only the nature of the tools has to change, but they face the challenge of reconciling the seemingly contradictory requirements of notational perspicuity and efficiency of performance. In this paper, we present a comparison and an evaluation of a number of software systems for grammar development, and argue that they are inadequate as practical tools for building wide-coverage grammars. We discuss a number of factors characteristic of this task, demonstrate how they influence the design of a suitable software environment, and describe the implementation of a system which has supported efficient development of a large computational grammar of English?
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING '88, Budapest, Hungary, August 22-27, 1988 |
Pages | 54-58 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Publication status | Published - 1988 |