A Case Study in Implementing Dependency-Based Grammars
Marie Bourdon, Lyne Da Sylva, Michel Gagnon, Alma Kharrat, Sonja Knoll, Anna Maclachlan · 1998
In creating an English grammar checking software product, we implemented a large-coverage grammar based on the dependency grammar formalism. This implementation required some adaptation of current linguistic description to prevent serious overgeneration of parse trees. Here, we present one particular example, that of preposition stranding and dangling prepositions, where implementing an alternative to existing linguistic analyses is warranted to limit such overgeneration. Introduction Implementing a linguistic theory such as dependency grammar leads to many types of problems (see the discussion in Fuchs et al, 1993, p.121ff, among others). We will focus on a problem typical of large-scale NLP implementations: some theoretical descriptions entail unforeseen computational costs. The linguistic phenomenon chosen to illustrate this problem is the case of so-called stranded and dangling prepositions in English. We will show how our initial description, akin to those presented...