This paper introduces the Syntax Game, a language game for exploring the origins of syntactic structure, specifically phrase structure. We define the game and propose a particular strategy for playing it. We show that this strategy leads to the emergence of a phrase structure grammar through the collective invention, adoption, and alignment of culturally established conventions.

Dependency structures do not have the information of phrase categories in phrase structure grammar. Thus, dependency parsing relies heavily on the lexical information of words. This paper discusses our investigation into the effectiveness of lexicalization in dependency parsing. Specifically, by restricting the degree of lexicalization in the training phase of a parser, we examine the change in...

This paper builds upon and extends certain ideas developed within the framework of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG). ill A new descriptive device, the Category Cooccurrence Restriction (CCR), is introduced in analogy to existing devices of GPSG in order to express constraints on the cooccurrence of categories within local trees (i.e. trees of depth one) which at present are stated wi...

The methods described in this paper are patent pending. Please contact David Lackner of the NASA Ames Commercial Technology Office, [email protected], (650) 604-5761, for information about licensing the methods. A software implementation of the methods is available to licensees.

The aim of the paper is to present a project of a syntactically annotated corpus of Hittite, a dead cuneiform language (Anatolian family), the oldest Indo-European language attested in writing, that was spoken in 18-12 cc. BC on the territory of present-day Turkey. No publicly available corpus of Hittite with syntactic annotation exists so far, meanwhile Hittite syntax proves to be more and mor...

The inflection of words based on agreement, such as number, gender and case, is considered to contribute to clarify the dependency between words in a sentence. Our purpose in this study is to investigate the efficiency of word inflections with HPSG (Head–driven Phrase Structure Grammar), which is able to deal with these features directly. Using a notion of utility, we measure the efficiency of ...

This paper aims to investigate the typology of resultative constructions (henceforth RC) in Korean, to provide their relevant constraints and finally to propose formal structures of RCs in a unified way. RCs refer to a formation that combines a simple sentence with a result phrase or an expression denoting the result of an action. For example, red in Lee painted the wall red, a result phrase ca...

Any linguistic paradigm with scientiic aspirations must provide substantial answers to two questions. What does a grammar of a natural language claim of the natural language? And what qualiies as corroborating or confuting evidence for that claim? I have striven for longer than I am willing to casually admit to furnish the HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) linguistic paradigm of (Poll...

Metagrammaticai formalisms that combine context-free phrase structure rules and metarules (MPS grammars) allow concise statement of generalizations about the syntax of natural languages. Unconstrained MPS grammars, tmfortunately, are not cornputationally "safe." We evaluate several proposals for constraining them, basing our amae~ment on computational tractability and explanatory adequacy. We s...