Richter: Grammatikformalismen für die Computerlinguistik (SS 08)

General Information about the Course

Information Sheet (distributed in the first regular class meeting)
Classes: Our class meets Tuesday and Thursday, 11ct-12.45 in seminar room 1.13 at the SfS. The course language is English.
Tutorial: Wednesday, 14ct-15.45 in the Computer Pool (2.26+2.28)
Office Hours: Tuesday, 11.00-12.00, SfS, Room 2.17 (Email: f.richter@em.uni-frankfurt.de)
Final Exam: July 17th
Date for potential make-up exam: July 25th

Course Readings

Carl Pollard, Ivan A. Sag: Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, CSLI Standford and The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1994.
(selected chapters)
Frank Richter: A Web-based Course in Grammar Formalisms and Parsing (selected chapters)
Web-page with description and all resources of 'Grammar Formalisms and Parsing'
Selected Course Related Literature in Alphabetical Order

Software and Manuals

MoMo: Manual (in pdf format)
MoMo: Code for downloading and installing MoMo on your computer
TRALE: Manuals and annotated source code (various formats)
Webpage with the updated textbook grammars (adapted to the new TRALE system)
Using MoMo in the computer pool (installation uses Java 1.6):
- Add a link to MoMo in a directory which is in your binary PATH:
  ln -s /afs/sfs/lehre/fr/MoMo/momo momo
- New (April 29th): For full functionality, download the file .java.policy and save it in your homedirectory. If there is already a file .java.policy in your homedirectory, append the downloaded file to it.
- Start a MoMo session by typing:
  1. momo &
Using TRALE in the computer pool (installation based on SICStus 3.12.8 and Java 1.6):
- Add the following two directories to your PATH variable:
  /afs/sfs/lehre/fr/newtrale/bin
  /afs/sfs/lehre/fr/gralej/bin
- Start a TRALE session in shells in which these paths are set by typing (setup changed on April 24th!):
  1. newtrale -fg &
  The -g option starts the graphical interface (GraleJ); then TRALE comes up and automatically connects to the interface.
  Important: When you do this the first time after the change of the GraleJ/TRALE installation on April 24th, first start GraleJ alone with the command
  gralej --reset &
  to get rid of the previous settings of GraleJ. Then close GraleJ and proceed as described in 1 above.

On-line Grammar

(Partial) Implementation of Pollard and Sag's grammar of English in TRALE with web interface in two variants. For both variants, you should know about the following properties of the web interface:

The interface is password protected to limit access to class members.
Some restrictions on the input (queries) and output (parse results) apply: There is an upper limit on the number of words and the length of strings in parse queries, and only up to 8 solutions of ambiguous parses will be shown.
Webtrale access links:
- Interface Variant 1 (simpler, browser-based interface)
  For using the interface, please activate JavaScript and use Mozilla/Firefox or Internet Explorer. Mozilla and Explorer seem to be incompatible with the web interface on Mac OS X. If you would like to use it on Mac OS X, try Firefox. In this version of the interface, there is a browser-specific limit to the possible depth of nesting in AVMs. Beyond this limit, the browser cannot expand AVMs.
- Interface Variant 2 (Java applet interface)
  This interface has the same features as GraleJ and is not subject to the limitations regarding nested AVMs of the browser-based interface. However, it requires that Sun's Java plugin 1.6 be installed in your browser. Older Java plugins do not work, and some open source versions of Java will not yet support this applet either. To date there is no solution available for Macs.
Alternatively, you may use GraleJ for connecting to the webtrale server as explained in class. With GraleJ, there are no limitations on the depth of nesting in AVMs.

Homework Assignments

Blatt 1 (April 22nd; due: April 28th)
Blatt 2 (April 29th; due: May 5th)
Blatt 3 (May 6th; due: May 19th)
Blatt 4 (May 20th; due: May 26th)
Blatt 5 (May 27th; due: June 2nd)
Blatt 6 (June 3d; due: June 9th)
Blatt 7; MoMo file for extra credit: extra-credit7.mmp (June 10th; due: June 16th)
Blatt 8 (June 17th; due: June 23rd)
Blatt 9 (June 24th; due: June 30th)
Blatt 10 (July 1st; due: July 7th)
Blatt 11 (July 8th; due: July 13th)

Handouts, Slides, Grammar Files

Die Signatur (June 19th)
Grammar Principles (June 24th)
Phrase structure grammar with simple syntactic categories from class meeting on June 26th:
Signature / Theory

A few relevant websites

on linguistics and on HPSG

at the SfS:
at the Universität Tübingen:
- The Library Catalogue
- Sonderforschungsbereich 441 Linguistische Datenstrukturen
elsewhere in the world:

on computational resources useful for this course

on implementation platforms for HPSG

Frank Richter