Eden German Grammar: main developments March-July 2003

• Increase in structural complexity covered– provision of X-bar structural backbone within noun

phrases– simulation of restricted cross-categorial rules (e.g.,

clause-like structures as adjective phrases)– conjunctions of most categories added

• Restriction of potential ambiguity– stronger use of feature agreement– reliance on ‘flat’ result for matching purposes (gr-list

triples)

Eden German Grammar: developments March-July 2003

• Rules covering annotated inputs– dates, numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, email

addresses (in progress)

• Rules covering sentence fragments – Bulleted lists, parenthetical elements, etc.

• Extended ‘stop-list’ for restricting matching of results with general term– 380 lexical items– general terms such as ‘where’, ‘be’, ‘I’, ‘would like’, etc.

Statistics

• Grammar: 750 rules– 350 rules automatically generated for word order

permutation with verb-second clauses (VP1)– 150 rules automatically generated for word order

permutations with verb-final clauses (VP2)– both taken over from the Dutch Eden grammar

• Lexicon: 575.000 full-form entries– 100.000+ distinct forms– 20.000+ distinct lexical items

Examples of grammatical constructions covered

Die Baubehörde hat aber zuvor eine Stellungnahme des für die Stadtplanung zuständigen Gemeinderatsausschusses einzuholen.

The building authorities first have to obtain a statement from the council commission that is responsible for town planning.

Examples of grammatical constructions covered

Die Baubehörde hat aber zuvor eine Stellungnahme des für die Stadtplanung zuständigen Gemeinderatsausschusses einzuholen.

Noun phrase with extensive prenominal modification: ‘the for the town-planning responsible commission’

Examples of grammatical constructions covered

Die Baubehörde hat aber zuvor eine Stellungnahme des für die Stadtplanung zuständigen Gemeinderatsausschusses einzuholen.

Modification by clause-like adjectival phrase ‘for the town-planning responsible…’

Examples of grammatical constructions covered

Die Baubehörde hat aber zuvor eine Stellungnahme des für die Stadtplanung zuständigen Gemeinderatsausschusses einzuholen.

Noun phrase with genitive postmodification ‘of the commission’ : restricted by agreement of genitive case (des [the] and Gemeinderatausschusses)

Examples of grammatical constructions covered

Die Baubehörde hat aber zuvor eine Stellungnahme des für die Stadtplanung zuständigen Gemeinderatsausschusses und der Stadt einzuholen.

(The building authorities first have to obtain a statement from the council commission that is responsible for town planning and the town.)

Examples of grammatical constructions covered

Die Baubehörde hat aber zuvor eine Stellungnahme des für die Stadtplanung zuständigen Gemeinderatsausschusses und der Stadt einzuholen.

Conjunction constrained by agreement of grammatical features: here genitive case over ‘X and Y’

Example of use of features to restrict ambiguity

The following noun phrase is potentially ambiguous according to the X-bar backbone:

einem Wagen für den Mann und der Fraua car for the man and the woman

Either:

• a car for [the man and the woman]• [a car for the man] and [the woman]

Example of use of features to restrict ambiguity

But:both the car [einem Wagen] and the woman [der Frau] are in the dative case.

Therefore:1. they can be combined with the conjunction and

[und]2. the man [den Mann], which is in the accusative case,

cannot be combined with the woman [der Frau]

There is only one appropriate structure

Example of use of features to restrict ambiguity

BOTH DATIVE → conjunction OK

NO CASE AGREEMENT → no CONJUNCTION

The entire NP is also dative and is therefore unambiguously an Indirect Object (IObj)

Example of use of flat semantics to avoid ambiguity

einen Wagen für den Mann und die Fraua car for the man and the woman

Now all of the NPs can be accusative case and so there is no possibility of avoiding the ambiguity

The grammar therefore has both alternatives as hypotheses:

a car for the man] and [the woman]a car for [the man and the woman]

a car for the man] and [the woman]

a car for [the man and the woman]

a car for the man] and [the woman]

a car for [the man and the woman]

Despite the different grammatical structure, the flat semantics contains similar elements, thereby reducing the consequences of the ambiguity for matching

p-mod WAGEN MANNrelation FUER MANN

More systematic use of this property is to be explored further

Remaining tasks

• Tuning and extension for the application domains for recall and precision

• Systematic testing and evaluation against standard analysis benchmarks

• Exploration of the optimal semantic patterns for improving matching and retrieval results

• Lexicon augmentation