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)