Atomization in grammar sharing
Megumi Kameyama · 1988
We describe a prototype SHARED GRAMMAR for the syntax of simple nominal expressions in Arabic, English, French, German, and Japanese implemented at MCC. In this grammar, a complex inheritance lattice of shared grammatical templates provides parts that each language can put together to form language-specific grammatical templates. We conclude that grammar sharing is not only possible but also desirable. It forces us to reveal crosslinguistically invariant grammatical primitives that may otherwise remain conflated with other primitives if we deal only with a single language or language type. We call this the process of GRAMMATICAL ATOMIZATION. The specific implementation reported here uses categorial unification grammar. The topics include the mono-level nominal category N, the functional distinction between ARGUMENT and NON-ARGUMENT of nominals, grammatical agreement, and word order types.