Project A5

Grammar Implementation

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  Project A5
  Publications
  Activities
  Bound Words Bibliography
  Polarity Items Bibliography
  Collection of Distributionally Idiosyncratic Items
  Grammar Implementation
  Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft
  HPSG in Tübingen

The online grammar gives you an opportunity to go and explore our HPSG theory of idiomatic expressions, bound words and negative polarity items. Along the way it confirms the logical consistency of our theory and demonstrates that it can be implemented efficiently. The grammar contains a representative selection of German constructions that are captured by our theory of distributionally idiosyncratic items.

There are two interfaces available. When you access them, type web as user name and password:

  • Simple browser-based interface (currently off-line; to come back soon!)
    For using this 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. There is a browser-specific limit to the possible depth of nesting in AVMs. Beyond this limit, the browser cannot expand AVMs.
  • Java applet interface (currently off-line; to come back soon!)
    This interface has the same features as TRALE's 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.
    This interface might experience problems on some configurations. If it does not work on your machine, you might want to try the simpler interface. We would also be grateful to hear from users who have problems with the applet-based interface.
Using the online grammar is quite intuitive if you keep a few facts about the interface in mind:
  1. Type every word in your sentences in lower case letters. The complete lexicon of the web grammar is displayed on the left in alphabetical order.
  2. The interface is restricted to parsing full sentences (verb second and verb first), NPs and PPs. No other expressions are recognized. The words in the grammar can be inspected by clicking on their entries in the lexicon.
  3. Words can only be analyzed in exactly the form in which they are given in the lexicon. Ambiguous words are typically not contained in more than one form in our grammar. If a grammatical sentence is not parsed, you might be using a different form of a word.
  4. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:
    • zu potte
    • (a) aas, (b) kein aas
    • (a) einen baeren, (b) er bindet ihr einen baeren auf
    • (a) achtkantig, (b) der mann wirft den hund achtkantig hinaus
    • (a) jemals, (b) kein mann trinkt jemals saft, (c) *der mann trinkt jemals saft
    • (a) ein hehl, (b) anne macht keinen hehl aus dem unsinn, (c) *anne macht einen hehl aus dem unsinn
    • (a) niemand will den missstand wahrhaben, (b) der alte mann will den missstand nicht wahrhaben, (c) *der alte mann will den missstand wahrhaben


Last updated on May 30, 2009