From Syntax to Semantics

1. Introduction

Johann Haller, Paul Schmidt, Erich Steiner, Elke Teich and Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt   1

1.1 Organization: EUROTRA-D and subsidiary research  2

1.2 The concept of linguistic levels 3 

1.3 Rule formalism and syntax  3

1.4 The EUROTRA Interface Structure  4

1.5 Problems and proposals  6





Part I: A coherent system-theory and implementation  11





2. A syntactic description of a fragment of German in the EUROTRA framework

Paul Schmidt  11

2.0 Introduction  11

2.1 The representational language  11

2.2 Configurational structures (ECS)  17

2.3 Relational structure (ERS)  25

2.4 The relation between constituency and dependency  37

2.5 Summary  39





3. The development of the EUROTRA-D system of Semantic Relations

Erich Steiner, Ursula Eckert, Birgit Roth and Jutta Winter-Thielen  40

3.0 Introduction  40

3.1 A procedure for assigning semantic structures to clauses  47

3.2 Appli'cation to German  52

3.3 Problems and solutions  64

3.4 Stability and extensibility of the system  81

Appendix I  84

Appendix II  93

Appendix III  102





4. From cognitive grammar to the generation of semantic interpretation in machine translation

Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt  105

4.0 Introduction  105

4.1 The principles of linguistic semantics  105

4.2 The entity grammar  121

4.3 The application of the formalism  122

4.4 Implementation of the , T formalism  124

Appendix  129





Part II: Semantic Relations in an MT environment  133





5. Semantic Relations in LFG and in EUROTRA-D: a comparison

Erich Steiner  133

5.0 Introduction  133

5.1 On the independence of predicate-argument structure from representations of syntactic context  134

5.2 Polyadicity of predicates  136

5.3 Universal conditions on the assignment of grammatical functions  138

5.4 The treatment of variable polyadicity  145

5.5 Concluding remarks  147





6. Generating German from Semantic Relations: Semantic Relations as an input to the SEMSYN generator

Ulrich Heid, Dictmar Rosner and Birgit Roth  149

6.0 Introduction  149

6.1 The basis of the experiment  149

6.2 Mapping participant roles on to syntactic functions  151

6.3 Summary  159





Part III: From source language to target language-aspects of transfer  161





7. Transfer strategies in EUROTRA-D

Paul Schmidt  161

7.0 Introduction  161

7.1 Lexical transfer  161

7.2 Two remarks on semantic relations from a strategic point of view  168

7 .3 Examples for structural transfer  172





8. Semantic Relations in EUROTRA-D and syntactic functions in LFG: a comparison in the context of lexical transfer in machine translation

Ursula Eckert and Ulrich Heid  178

8.0 Introduction  178

8.1 Course of the experiment  179

8.2 Results of the experiment  181

8.3 Discussion  184

8.4 Final Remarks





9. The transfer of quantifiers in a multilingual machine translation system

Cornelia Zelinsky-Wibbelt  187

9.0 Introduction  187

9.1 Conditions for the semantics of determiners  187

9.2 Implementation strategy  188

9.3 The semantic functions of determiners  188

9.4 The interaction of the 'count' /'mass' distinction with the expression of the entity's set properties  192

9.5 The organization of the semantic features of determination  206

9.6 The meaning of the semantic features  206

9.7 The featurization of determiners and quantifiers  212

9.8 Deictic determination  215





Part IV: Explorations  216





10. A constructive version of GPSG for machine translation

Christa Hauettsclzild and Stephan Busemann  216

10.0 Introduction  216

10.1 The potential role of GPSG within an MT framework  217

10.2 The classical version of GPSG  219

10.3 GPSG from a constructive point of view  225

10.4 Prospects for further research: from syntax to semantics  236





11. LFG and the CAT-formalism

Paul Schmidt  239

11.0 Introduction  239

11.1 Constructing a little grammar in LFG  239

11.2 The problem with free word order in German  245

11.3 Long-distance movement  248

11.4 Summary  250





Bibliography  251

Index  259