Liviu Ciortuz

Fluid Construction Grammars (FCGs) are a flavour of Construction Grammars,which themselves are unification-based grammars. Its syntax is (only) up tocertain extent similar to other unification-based grammars. However, it lacks adeclarative semantics, while its procedural semantics is truly particular, comparedto other unification-based grammar formalisms.

Here we propose the re-definition of a subset of the FCG formalism (henceforthcalled FCGlight) within the framework of (order-sorted) feature constraintlogics (OSF-logic) that would assign FCG a rigorous (both declarative a and procedural)semantics, which is suitable for both parsing, generation and grammarlearning.

In this way we will be able to compare FCG to other unification-based grammars.We will also get the advantage of associating it another classical paradigmfor learning (“evolving”) new grammars. This is learning in hierarchies (lattices)of concepts which exploits a partial order relation (generalisation / specialisation)between grammars, instead of the method currently used by FCG, which is(inspired by) reinforcement learning. This will enable a rather natural link withthe linguistic background knowledge when devising the grammar repair strategiesand a clear way to compare different grammars that could be learned by anagent at each step during the grammar evolution process.

In return, inspired by the FCG approach to grammar learning, we are able todefine new ways for learning grammars in other unification-based formalisms. Inparticular, ILP-like learning of HPSGs can be substantially improved by usingideas borrowed from FCG:

– instead of using a given “golden” test suite (against which the learning isperformed), this test suite is dynamically produced during the language game(played by two agents);

– the grammar learning process will be “grounded”, something which was notconsidered before;

– we will learn also new rules (instead of modifying the given ones, as currentlydone in ilpLIGHT)

– learning new rules by generalising upon already learned rules, will also be asignificant step forward.

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Bibtex

@TechReport{phd_thesis,
    author = "Liviu Ciortuz",
    title = "{FCGlight: Making the bridge between Fluid Construction Grammars and main-stream unification grammars by using feature constraint logics}",
    institution = "``Al.I.Cuza'' University of Ia{c s}i, Faculty of Computer Science",
    year = "2010",
    number = "TR 10-02",
    url = "https://publications.info.uaic.ro/technical-reports/archive/tr10-02-2010-fcglight-making-the-bridge-between-fluid-construction-grammars-and-main-stream-unification-grammars-by-using-feature-constraint-logics/"
}