Abstract
We outline an algorithm capable of generating varied but natural sounding sequences of argument NPs in subordinate clauses of German, a semi-free word order language. In order to attain the right level of output flexibility, the algorithm considers (1) the relevant lexical properties of the head verb (not only transitivity type but also reflexivity, thematic relations expressed by the NPs, etc.), and (2) the animacy and definiteness values of the arguments, and their length. The relevant statistical data were extracted from the NEGRA–II treebank and from hand-coded features for animacy and definiteness. The algorithm maps the relevant properties onto “primary” versus “secondary” placement options in the generator. The algorithm is restricted in that it does not take into account linear order determinants related to the sentence’s information structure and its discourse context (e.g. contrastiveness). These factors may modulate the above preferences or license “tertiary” linear orders beyond the primary and secondary options considered here.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Langkilde, I., Knight, K.: Generation that exploits corpus–based statistical knowledge. In: Proceedings of the 36th ACL & 17th COLING, Montreal (1998)
Wasow, T.: Postverbal behavior. CSLI Publications, Stanford (2002)
Müller, G.: Optimality, markedness, and word order in German. Linguistics 37, 777–815 (1999)
Keller, F.: Gradience in grammar: Experimental and computational aspects of degrees of grammaticality. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Edinburgh (2000)
Skut, W., Krenn, B., Brants, T., Uszkoreit, H.: An annotation scheme for free word order languages. In: Proceedings of the Fifth ANLP, Washington, D.C. (1997)
Uszkoreit, H.: Word Order and Constituent Structure in German. CSLI Publication, Stanford (1987)
Pechmann, T., Uszkoreit, H., Engelkamp, J., Zerbst, D.: Wortstellung im deutschen Mittelfeld. Linguistische Theorie und psycholinguistische Evidenz. In: Perspektiven der Kognitiven Linguistik. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden (1996)
Kurz, D.: A statistical account on word order variation in German. In: Abeillé, A., Brants, T., Uszkoreit, H. (eds.) Proceedings of the COLING Workshop on Linguistically Interpreted Corpora, Luxembourg (2000)
Kempen, G., Harbusch, K.: A corpus study into word order variation in German subordinate clauses: Animacy affects linearization independently of grammatical function assignment. In: Pechmann, T., Habel, C. (eds.) Multidisciplinary approaches to language production. Mouton De Gruyter, Berlin (in press)
Hawkins, J.A.: A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1994)
Abbott, B.: Definiteness and indefiniteness. In: Horn, L.R., Ward, G. (eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell, Oxford (in press)
König, E., Lezius, W.: A description language for syntactically annotated corpora. In: Proceedings of the 18th COLING, Saarbrücken (2000)
Kempen, G., Harbusch, K.: How flexible is constituent order in the midfield of German subordinate clauses? A corpus study revealing unexpected rigidity. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Linguistic Evidence, Tübingen (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kempen, G., Harbusch, K. (2004). Generating Natural Word Orders in a Semi–free Word Order Language: Treebank-Based Linearization Preferences for German. In: Gelbukh, A. (eds) Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing. CICLing 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2945. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24630-5_42
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24630-5_42
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-21006-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24630-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive