A Connectionist Parser for Lexical Functional Grammar

In this document an architecture for a purely Connectionist parser for Lexical Functional Grammar is proposed. It builds on recent developments in Connectionist Representation Techniques and Connectionist Parsing, to provide a distributed Connectionist implementation of Uniication which uses Holistic Computation in order to achieve constant time operation. It will exploit SRAAMs, a recently developed Connectionist representation technique, to represent both parse trees and f-structures, and it is intended that the parser should have a broad coverage including phenomena such as embedded clauses which earlier Connectionist parsers have had diiculty with. If successful this work should demonstrate that it is possible to provide symbol processing functionality within traditional Connectionist systems based on networks trained with backpropagation, and that this can be done whilst retaining the Connectionist character of such systems. Furthermore , it will have demonstrated that, through Holistic Computation, it is possible for Connectionist systems to manipulate symbol structures in ways unavailable to conventional Symbolic systems.