XMG : eXtensible MetaGrammar

Benoît Crabbé (1) , Denys Duchier (2) , Claire Gardent (3) , Joseph Le Roux (4) , Yannick Parmentier (2)

1 ALPAGE - Analyse Linguistique Profonde à Grande Echelle ; Large-scale deep linguistic processing
2 LIFO - Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale d'Orléans
3 SYNALP - Natural Language Processing : representations, inference and semantics
4 LIPN - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris-Nord

In this article, we introduce eXtensible MetaGrammar (xmg), a framework for specifying tree-based grammars such as Feature-Based Lexicalised Tree-Adjoining Grammars (FB-LTAG) and Interaction Grammars (IG). We argue that xmg displays three features which facilitate both grammar writing and a fast prototyping of tree-based grammars. Firstly, \xmg\ is fully declarative. For instance, it permits a declarative treatment of diathesis that markedly departs from the procedural lexical rules often used to specify tree-based grammars. Secondly, the \xmg\ language has a high notational expressivity in that it supports multiple linguistic dimensions, inheritance and a sophisticated treatment of identifiers. Thirdly, xmg is extensible in that its computational architecture facilitates the extension to other linguistic formalisms. We explain how this architecture naturally supports the design of three linguistic formalisms namely, FB-LTAG, IG, and Multi-Component Tree-Adjoining Grammar (MC-TAG). We further show how it permits a straightforward integration of additional mechanisms such as linguistic and formal principles. To further illustrate the declarativity, notational expressivity and extensibility of \xmg , we describe the methodology used to specify an FB-LTAG for French augmented with a unification-based compositional semantics. This illustrates both how xmg facilitates the modelling of the tree fragment hierarchies required to specify tree-based grammars and of a syntax/semantics interface between semantic representations and syntactic trees. Finally, we briefly report on several grammars for French, English and German that were implemented using \xmg\ and compare \xmg\ to other existing grammar specification frameworks for tree-based grammars.

Mots clés: Grammar formalism

Domaines: Traitement du texte et du document

Benoît Crabbé, Denys Duchier, Claire Gardent, Joseph Le Roux, Yannick Parmentier. XMG : eXtensible MetaGrammar. Computational Linguistics, 2013, 39 (3), pp.591-629. ⟨hal-00768224⟩