Typed unification grammars
Martin Emele, Rémi Zajac · 1990
We introduce TFS, a computer formalism in the class of logic formalisms which integrates a powerful type system. Its basic data structures are typed feature structures. The type system encourages an object-oriented approach to linguistic description by providing a multiple inheritance mechanism and an inference mechanism which allows the specification of relations between levels of linguistic description defined as classes of objects. We illustrate this approach starting from a very simple DCG, and show how to make use of the typing system to enforce general constraints and modularize linguistic descriptions, and how further abstraction leads to a HPSG-like grammar.