Restricting Logic Grammars

Engineering

Volume

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 5

Natural Language

A parser formalism for natural languages that is so restricted as to rule out the definition of linguistic structures that do not occur in any natural language can make the task of grammar construction easier, whether it is done manually (by a programmer) or automatically (by a grammar induction system). A restrictive grammar formalism for logic programming languages is presented that imposes some of the constraints suggested by recent Chomskian linguistic theory. In spite of these restrictions, this formalism allows for relatively elegant characterizations of natural languages that can be translated into efficient prolog parsers.