[comp.ai] systemic grammar and realization rules

raza@cs.hw.ac.uk (Z. Raza Hussain) (02/20/91)

something which i've been trying to understand for a long time about 
systemic grammars is how the idea of 'classification' and 'systems' fit 
with the syntax of languages.  from this, i mean how is it possible to
use computational methods to derive systems and classify constituents ?
is this where the idea of using realization rules comes into the theory ?
(is it that realization rules help to convert the system description
into classificatiion description? if this is so, then my original
question becomes : how is it possible to get a functional description
from examining syntax ?)

i realise that this theory is developed from a non-computing point of
view (sociological viewpoint of linguistics as originally observed by 
Malanowski) and is difficult to implement.

thanks for any ideas,

raza

rda@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Robert Dale) (02/21/91)

raza@cs.hw.ac.uk (Z. Raza Hussain) writes:

>... if this is so, then my original
>question becomes : how is it possible to get a functional description
>from examining syntax ?)

>i realise that this theory is developed from a non-computing point of
>view (sociological viewpoint of linguistics as originally observed by 
>Malanowski) and is difficult to implement.

Systemic Grammar has been widely used in Natural Language Generation
for a long time, the most prominent work being the Nigel grammar
developed at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of
Southern California, although there are other substantial
implementations around.  For parsing, you may want to look at more
recent work by Bob Kasper.  In particular, check out:

%t TechReport
%I ISI
%T Systemic Grammar and Functional Unification Grammar
and Representational Issues in Systemic Functional Grammar
%A Christian Matthiessen
%A Robert Kasper
%N RS-87-179
%M April
%Y 1987

%t InProceedings
%A R T Kasper
%Y 1988
%T An experimental parser for systemic grammars
%B COLING88
%p 309-312

%t InProceedings
%A Robert T Kasper
%Y 1989
%T Unification and Classification: An Experiment in Information-Based Parsing
%B International Workshop on Parsing Technologies
%I Carnegie Mellon University
%C Pittsburgh
%p 1-7
%M August

R


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