SFB 991

DGfS-CL Fall School 2011

Introduction to Tree Adjoining Grammar

Lecturer: Wolfgang Maier and Timm Lichte, SFB 991, University of Düsseldorf, Germany

Abstract

Grammar theories try to model the properties of well-formed strings (and ex negativo ill-formed strings) of natural language. They make use of grammar formalisms (GB, MG, LFG, HPSG, ...), and ideally they get implemented in NLP applications. This course will provide an in-depth introduction to Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG), a grammar formalism that features a nice trade-off between generative capacity and computational complexity. The first week highlights the formal machinery of TAG, TAG parsing and the syntax-semantics interface. In the second week, we will go into grammar engineering, first by looking into TAG analyses for several phenomena of English and German, and then by showing ways to build up and to maintain wide coverage grammars based on TAG.

Course information

The course will be held within the DGfS-CL Fall School 2011 from August 29 to September 6 at the University of Zürich. 

Four ETCS credits can be obtained by participating in each session, solving at least 75% of the exercises, and writing a short essay (4 pages) or solving an implementation task after the course.

First Week

  • Going beyond Context-Free Grammar. Slides (single, 4up) 
  • Formal definition of Tree Adjoining Grammar. Slides (single, 4up)
  • TAG and Natural Languages. Slides (single, 4up)
  • TAG parsing. Slides (single, 4up), Example for the CYK algorithm (pdf)
  • Extensions of TAG. Slides (single, 4up)

All exercises and solutions are available  here (last change: Sep 3)

Second Week

  • TAG as a  model of natural language syntax (single, 4up)
  • Control and raising in XTAG (see below)
  • Extraction in XTAG (single, 4up)
  • Implementing tree templates with XMG (single, 4up)
  • Using tree templates with TuLiPA

All exercises and solutions are available here. The XMG source code for the fourth exercise is available here.