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[xtag-meeting]: This week: Talk by Kim Gerdes (usual time and place)




Where: 10:30am Thursday 04/25/02, IRCS Fishbowl

What: Kim Gerdes, visiting us from U. Paris 7, will give a talk on a 
metagrammar approach to producing a TAG grammar for German. Abstract follows.


A German Metagrammar
- Kim Gerdes

Even though a full German grammar is beyond the (derivative) generative 
capacity of Tree Adjoining Grammars, a German TAG can be useful for tasks 
where not all possible word orders are needed, i.e. for generation. My trip 
takes me from Scylla to Charybdis, when trying to join correct derived and 
derivation trees while producing a useful generation grammar. The use of a 
metagrammar will be shown to be enchanting but problematic: M.H. Candito's 
metagrammar compiler was closely linked to the grammar she wanted to produce 
and cannot easily be adapted to my goals, and the new compiler written by 
Bertrand Gaiffe is running but still in alpha state. However, the resulting 
trees can be used for limited purposes, and the experience gathered on the way 
may help avoid some cliffs when designing a Tree Adjoining Grammar for a new 
language.