A Fuzzy Grammar for Evaluating Universality and Complexity in Natural Language

Abstract

The paper focuses on linguistic complexity and language universals, which are two important and controversial issues in language research. A Fuzzy Property Grammar for determining the degree of universality and complexity of a natural language is introduced. In this task, the Fuzzy Property Grammar operated only with syntactic constraints. Fuzzy Natural Logic sets the fundamentals to express the notions of universality and complexity as evaluative expressions. The Fuzzy Property Grammar computes the constraints in terms of weights of universality and calculates relative complexity. We present a proof-of-concept in which we have generated a grammar with 42B syntactic constraints. The model classifies constraints in terms of low, medium, and high universality and complexity. Degrees of relative complexity in terms of similarity from a correlation matrix have been obtained. The results show that the architecture of a Universal Fuzzy Property Grammar is flexible, reusable, and re-trainable, and it can easily take into account new sets of languages, perfecting the degree of universality and complexity of the linguistic constraints as well as the degree of complexity between languages.

Dealing with Evaluative Expressions and Hate Speech Metaphors with Fuzzy Property Grammar Systems

“…The model, and its mathematical architecture, are explained in Torrens-Urrutia et al [20] and applied to the semantics of the theory of evaluative expressions of Fuzzy Natural logic in Torrens-Urrutia et al [15], as well as on a computational experiment for computing degrees of linguistic universality and complexity [35].…”

“…To model metaphors, our formal model integrates a Fuzzy Property Grammar from Torrens et al [15,20,35] on a linguistic grammar system from Jiménez-López [47]. The Fuzzy Property Grammars characterize linguistic phenomena, giving information regarding language understanding.…”

Describing Linguistic Vagueness of Evaluative Expressions Using Fuzzy Natural Logic and Linguistic Constraints

“…Some of the works in linguistics integrating FNL as a fundamental part of their framework can be found in the modelling of a Fuzzy Property Grammar [17][18][19][20]. FNL is essential to define the basis of a fuzzy grammar with linguistic features in such work.…”

“…All the linguistic descriptions from now on are conducted following the framework of Fuzzy Property Grammars (FPGr). For a deeper insight of the theory, see [18][19][20].…”