Modular Logic Grammars

Abstract

This report describes a logic grammar formalism, Modular Logic Grammars, exhibiting a high degree of modularity between syntax and semantics. There is a syntax rule compiler (compiling into Prolog) which takes care of the building of analysis structures and the interface to a clearly separated semantic interpretation component dealing with scoping and the construction of logical forms. The whole system can work in either a one-pass mode or a two-pass mode. In the one-pass mode, logical forms are built directly during parsing through interleaved calls to semantics, added automatically by the rule compiler. In the two-pass mode, syntactic analysis trees are built automatically in the first pass, and then given to the (one-pass) semantic component. The grammar formalism includes two devices which cause the automatically built syntactic structures to differ from derivation trees in two ways: [I) There is a shift operator, for dealing with left-embedding constructions such as English possessive noun phrases while using right-recursive rules (which are appropriate for Prolog parsing). (2) There is a distinction in the syntactic formalism between strong non-terminals and weak non-terminals, which is important for distinguishing major levels of grammar.