Functional Dependency Grammars

Andreea Gagea (cas. Macovei)Faculty of Computer Science Iasi

Dependency Grammar

- dependency between grammatical units;- Lucien Tesnière -1959;- the main aim: to parse natural language and

generate tree banks;- dependency versus constituency;

Dependency Grammar Formalisms: Theoretical Frameworks and Implementations

- Algebraic Syntax- Operator Grammar- Lexicase Dependency Grammar- Functional Generative Description (FGD)- Meaning-Text Theory (MTT)- Word Grammar (WG)- Topological/Extensible Dependency Grammar (XDG)- Constraint Dependency Grammar ([W]CDG)- Functional Dependency Grammar (FDG)

Functional Dependency Grammar (FDG)

1. Definition- introduced by Tapanainen and Järvinen

(1997);- with two conceptually different components:

regular language based analysis and structural dependency graphs;

- the first computer implementation of Tesnière’s Dependency Theory.

2. Structure

- Nucleus- Connexions- Syntactic head

3. Examples

a) What would you like me to do?

- structural dependency graph - the directed relations between the nuclei of the sentence

b) Did the dog run in the house?

- five nuclei in the sentence

4. Applications for FDG

a) Connexor - a language technology provider ;- supports ten European languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish);

b) Link Grammar- a syntactic parser of English and other languages;- with a dictionary of about 60000 word forms.

a) Connexor:

Sentence: John has two apples.

Structure:

Components :

b) Link Grammar:

Sentence: John has two apples.

Structure:

5. Problematical Aspects

- Ambiguous sentences;

- Only a few studies concerning Romanian language processing;

- Costs;

6. Bibliography- Pasi Tapanainen (1999), Parsing in two frameworks: finite-state

and functional dependency grammar, Chapter 3, University of Helsinki, Finland

- T. Järvinen P. Tapanainen (1997), A dependency parser for English, Technical Report no. TR-1, Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki, Finland

- Connexor: http://www.connexor.eu/technology/machinese/demo/syntax/

- Link Grammar: http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/- Gramatici de dependenta:

http://thor.info.uaic.ro/~corinfor/teach/LC/SNLP/materials/disc/gramatici-general.pdf

- Dependency Grammars : http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/units/UIFS/grants/index.php?file=%2Fproj%2F533%2Ffmnl08-dependency.pdf&id=533

Thank you!