Construction of an HPSG grammar for the Arabic language and its specification in TDL

The construction of an HPSG grammar (Headdriven Phrase Structure Grammar) treating Arabic specificities is not an easy task. In fact, several syntactic phenomena must be taken into account. Thus, the main objective of this work is to construct an Arabic HPSG grammar based on a proposed type hierarchy that categorizes Arabic words. In fact, some adaptations were introduced to HPSG, at the level of features and ID schemata. All linguistic resources (e.g., lexicon, type hierarchy, syntactic rules) are specified in the Type Description Language (TDL). The experimentation of the constructed grammar was done using the Linguistic Knowledge Building (LKB) platform containing generation tools. Indeed, the choice of TDL language is justified. It has syntax similar to HPSG representation and it is considered as the principal input to the LKB platform.