Skip to main content

On Two Classes of Feature Paths in Large-Scale Unification Grammars

  • Chapter
New Developments in Parsing Technology

Part of the book series: Text, Speech and Language Technology ((TLTB,volume 23))

Abstract

We investigate two related techniques, Quick Check and Generalised Reduction, that contribute significantly to speeding up parsing with large-scale typed-unification grammars. The techniques take advantage of the properties of two particular classes of feature paths. Quick check is concerned with paths that most often lead to unification failure, whereas generalised reduction takes advantage of paths that do not (or only seldom) contribute to unification failure. Both sets of paths are obtained empirically by parsing a training corpus. We experiment with the two techniques, using a compilation-based parsing system on a large-scale grammar of English. The combined improvement in parsing speed we obtained is 56%.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Aït-Kaci, H. and Di Cosmo, R. (1993). Compiling order-sorted feature term unification. Technical report, Digital Paris Research Laboratory. PRL Technical Note 7, downloadable from http://www.isg.sfu.ca/life/.

  • Aït-Kaci, H. and Podelski, A. (1993). Towards a meaning of LIFE. Journal of Logic Programming, 16:195–234.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Aït-Kaci, H., Podelski, A., and Goldstein, S. (1997). Order-sorted feature theory unification. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 30:99–124.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Callmeier, U. (2000). PET — a platform for experimentation with efficient HPSG processing techniques. Natural Language Engineering, 6 (1) (Special Issue on Efficient Processing with HPSG):99–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carpenter, B. (1992). The Logic of Typed Feature Structures — with applications to unification grammars, logic programs and constraint resolution. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciortuz, L. (2001 a). Compilation of head-corner bottom-up chart-based parsing with unification grammars. In Proceedings of the IWPT 2001 International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, pages 209–212, Beijing, China.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciortuz, L. (2001b). On compilation of the Quick-Check filter for feature structure unification. In Proceedings of the IWPT 2001 International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, pages 90–100, Beijing, China.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciortuz, L. (2002a). Learning attribute values in typed-unification grammars: On generalised rule reduction. In Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2002), Taipei, Taiwan. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers and ACL.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciortuz, L. (2002b). LIGHT — a constraint language and compiler system for typed-unification grammars. In Proceedings of the 25th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI-2002), Aachen, Germany. Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciortuz, L. (2002c). LIGHT — another abstract machine for feature structure unification. In Flickinger, D., Oepen, S., Tsujii, J., and Uszkoreit, H., editors, Collaborative Language Engineering. CSLI Publications, The Center for studies of Language, Logic and Information, Stanford University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciortuz, L. (2002d). Towards inductive learning of typed-unification grammars. In Proceedings of the 17th Workshop on Logic Programming. Dresden Technical University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flickinger, D. P., Copestake, A., and Sag, I. A. (2000). HPSG analysis of English. In Wahlster, W., editor, Verbmobil: Foundations of Speech-to-Speech Translation, Artificial Intelligence, pages 254–263. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg New York.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Gerdemann, D. (1995). Term encoding of typed feature structures. In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, pages 89–97, Prague, Czech Republik.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, R. M. and Bresnan, J. (1983). Lexical-functional grammar: A formal system for grammatical representation. In Bresnan, J., editor, The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, pages 173–381. MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kay, M. (1989). Head driven parsing. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Parsing Technologies, pages 52–62, Pittsburg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kiefer, B., Krieger, H.-U., Carroll, J., and Malouf, R. (1999). A bag of useful techniques for efficient and robust parsing. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 473–480.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krieger, H.-U. and Schäfer, U. (1994). TDL — A Type Description Language for HPSG. Research Report RR-94-37, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

    Google Scholar 

  • Malouf, R., Carroll, J., and Copestake, A. (2000). Efficient feature structure operations without compilation. Natural Language Engineering, 6 (1) (Special Issue on Efficient Processing with HPSG):29–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maxwell III, J. and Kaplan, R. (1993). The interface between phrasal and functional constraints. Computational Linguistics, 19, Number 4:571–590.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitsuishi, Y., Torisawa, K., and Tsujii, J. (1998). HPSG-Style Underspecified Japanese Grammar with Wide Coverage. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), pages 867–880.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miyao, Y., Makino, T., Torisawa, K., and Tsujii, J. (2000). The LiLFeS abstract machine and its evaluation with the LinGO grammar. Natural Language Engineering, 6 (1) (Special Issue on Efficient Processing with HPSG):47–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Muggleton, S. and Raedt, L. D. (1994). Inductive logic programming: Theory and methods. Journal of Logic Programming, 19,20:629–679.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Müller, S. (1999). Deutsche Syntax deklarativ. Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar für das Deutsche. Number 394 in Linguistische Arbeiten. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagata, M. (1992). An empirical study on rule granularity and unification interleaving: toward an efficient unification-based parsing system. In Proceedings of COLING-92, pages 177–183.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ninomiya, T., Makino, T., and Tsujii, J. (2002). An indexing scheme for typed feature structures. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computational Linguistics: COLING-2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oepen, S. and Callmeier, U. (2000). Measure for measure: Parser cross-fertilization. Towards increased component comparability and exchange. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Parsing Technologies IWPT-2000, pages 183–194, Trento, Italy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oepen, S. and Carroll, J. (2000). Performance profiling for parser engineering. Natural Language Engineering, 6 (1) (Special Issue on Efficient Processing with HPSG: Methods, Systems, Evaluation):81–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pereira, F. (1985). A structure-sharing representation for unification-based grammar formalisms. In Proceedings of the 23rd meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 137–144, Chicago, Illinois.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollard, C. and Sag, I. (1994). Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. CSLI Publications, Stanford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shieber, S. (1985). Using restriction to extend parsing algorithms for complex feature-based formalisms. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the ACL, pages 145–152, Chicago, Illinois.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shieber, S. M., Uszkoreit, H., Pereira, F. C., Robinson, J., and Tyson, M. (1983). The formalism and implementation of PATR-II. In Bresnan, J., editor, Research on Interactive Acquisition and Use of Knowledge. SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif.

    Google Scholar 

  • Siegel, M. (2000). HPSG analysis of Japanese. In Verbmobil: Foundations of Speech-to-Speech Translation, pages 264–279. Springer Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sikkel, N. (1997). Parsing Schemata. Springer Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomabechi, H. (1992). Quasi-destructive graph unification with structure sharing. In Proceedings of COLING-92, pages 440–446, Nantes, France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Uszkoreit, H. (1986). Categorial Unification Grammar. In International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING’92), pages 498–504, Nancy, France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wintner, S. and Francez, N. (1999). Efficient implementation of unification-based grammars. Journal of Language and Computation, 1(1):53–92.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Ciortuz, L. (2004). On Two Classes of Feature Paths in Large-Scale Unification Grammars. In: Bunt, H., Carroll, J., Satta, G. (eds) New Developments in Parsing Technology. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2295-6_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2295-6_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-2293-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-2295-1

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

Publish with us

Policies and ethics