Anopensourcegrammardevelopmentenvironmentandbroad-coverage
EnglishgrammarusingHPSG
AnnCopestake,DanFlickinger
CSLI,VenturaHall,StanfordUniversityStanford,CA94305-4115,USAaac,danf@csli.stanford.edu
Abstract
TheLinGO(LinguisticGrammarsOnline)project’sEnglishResourceGrammarandtheLKBgrammardevelopmentenvironmentarelanguageresourceswhicharefreelyavailablefordownloadforanypurpose,includingcommercialuse(seehttp://lingo.stanford.edu).Executableprogramsandsourcecodearebothincluded.Inthispaper,wegiveanoutlineoftheLinGOEnglishgrammarandLKBsystem,anddiscussthewaysinwhichtheyarecurrentlybeingused.Thegrammarandprocessingsystemcanbeusedindependentlyorcombinedtogiveacentralcomponentwhichcanbeexploitedinavarietyofways.Ourintentioninwritingthispaperistoencouragemorepeopletousethetechnology,whichsupportscollaborativedevelopmentonmanylevels.
1.Introduction
Despitetheadvancesthathavebeenmadeinautomaticgrammarlearning,therearemanyapplicationswhichre-quirehand-builtorpartiallyhand-builtgrammarsforac-ceptableprecision.However,developingpreciselarge-coveragegrammarsandlexiconsofnaturallanguagesisaverytime-consumingactivity.InthispaperwegiveanoverviewoftheLinGO(LinguisticGrammarsOnline)project’sEnglishResourceGrammar(ERG)andtheLKBgrammardevelopmentenvironmentwhicharefreelyavail-ableresourcesforuseinresearch,teachingandcommercialapplications.TheLKBisageneral-purposesystemthatcanprocesstheERGandothergrammarswritteninatyped-featurestructureformalism.TheERGisabroad-coveragegrammarofEnglishintheHead-DrivenPhraseStructureGrammar(HPSG)frameworkwhichcanbeusedinarangeofapplications.BesidestheERG,somesmallergrammarsintendedforteachingpurposesarealsodistributed.Wedis-cussthestepswearetakingtomaketheERGandLinGOprocessingsystemasgenerallyusableaspossible,andde-scribesomeofthecollaborativeworkwhichhasbeenun-dertaken.
ThereareanumberofpropertiesoftheLinGOre-sourceswhich,takenincombination,makethemuniqueintermsofcurrentlyavailableNLPsystems:
AvailabilityTheLKBsystemandtheLinGOgrammars
arefreelyavailableontheWebasopensource(http://lingo.stanford.edu):theymaybeusedandmodi edbybothacademicandcommercialgroups.TheLKBsystemisimplementedinCommonLisp,1butisalsodistributedasastandaloneapplicationforLinux,Windows98/NTandSunSolarisplatforms,andcanbeinstalledandusedbypeoplewithnospe-cialistprogrammingknowledge.ExplicitformalizationanddeclarativityTheformalism
assumedbytheLKBsystem(Copestake,inpress)