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We have described a tool for grammar development in which tree descriptions are
used to provide an abstract specification of the linguistic phenomena relevant
to a particular language. In grammar development and maintenance, only the
abstract specifications need to be edited, and any changes or corrections will
automatically be proliferated throughout the grammar. In addition to
lightening the more tedious aspects of grammar maintenance, this approach also
allows a unique perspective on the general characteristics of a language.
Defining hierarchical blocks for the grammar both necessitates and facilitates
an examination of the linguistic assumptions that have been made with regard to
feature specification and tree-family definition. This can be very useful for
gaining an overview of the theory that is being implemented and exposing gaps
that remain unmotivated and need to be investigated. The type of gaps that can
be exposed could include a missing subcategorization frame that might arise
from the automatic combination of blocks and which would correspond to an
entire tree family, a missing tree which would represent a particular type of
transformation for a subcategorization frame, or inconsistent feature
equations. By focusing on syntactic properties at a higher level, our
approach allows new opportunities for the investigation of how languages relate
to themselves and to each other.
Next: Tree Naming conventions
Up: Lexical Organization
Previous: Generating grammars
XTAG Project
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~xtag