A rich environment for experimentation with unification grammars

This paper describes some of the features of a sophisticated language and environment designed for experimentation with unification-oriented linguistic descriptions. The system, which is called ud, has to date been used successfully as a development and prototyping tool in a research project on the application of situation schemata to the representation of real text, and in extensive experimentation in machine translation. While the ud language bears close resemblances to all the well-known unification grammar formalisms, it offers a wider range of features than any single alternative, plus powerful facilities for notabstraction which allow users to simulate different theoretical approaches in a natural way. After a brief discussion of the motivation for implementing yet another unification device, the main body of the paper is devoted to a description of the most important novel features of ud. The paper concludes with a discussion of some questions of implementation and completeness...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1989
• Where: EACL
• Authors: Rod L. Johnson, Mike Rosner
• Keywords: EACL 1989, Machine Translation, Natural Language Processing, Ud Language, Unification-oriented Linguistic Descriptions