GRAALAN – Grammar Abstract Language Basics

This paper gives an outline about most important features of GRAALAN (Grammar Abstract Language) used for linguistic knowledge description. GRAALAN is an implementation of theoretical concepts of GDGF (Generative Dependency Grammars with Features) and AVT (Attribute Value Trees). GDGF is based on dependency trees (DT) and a generative process. GDG eliminates some issues of Dependency Grammars DG (for example the missing of phrasal categories) and Generative Grammars GG (the problem of discontinuous structures) and merges the advantages of the two types of grammar (GG the representation of phrasal categories; GDG the handling of discontinuous structures as gaps and non projective constructions). GRAALAN can be used in the morphological description, morphological analysis, text annotation, grammar analysis, generation and even in the automatic translation process.