Implementing semantic frames as typed feature structures with XMG

Abstract

presents results on the integration of frame-based representations into the framework of eXtensible MetaGrammar (XMG). Originally XMG allowed for the description of tree-based syntactic structures and underspecified representations of predicate-logical formulae, but the representation of frames as a sort of typed feature structure, particularly type unification, was not supported. Therefore, we introduce an extension that is capable of handling frame representations directly by means of a novel <frame>-dimension. The aim is not only to make possible a straightforward specification of frame descriptions, but also to offer various ways to specify constraints on types, be it as a connected type hierarchy or a loose set of feature structure con-1 This article is a substantially revised and extended version of Lichte et al. (2013). It has greatly benefited from discussions with Laura Kallmeyer, Rainer Osswald, Christof Rumpf and Yulia Zinova. We also thank both the reviewers of the ESSLLI 2013 workshop on High-level Methodologies in Grammar Engineering (HMGE) and the the reviewers of the JLM for detailed and helpful comments. The work presented in this paper was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the CRC 991. It was also financially supported by the scientific network PARSEME (COST Action IC1207) with a travel grant for Simon Petitjean. When finishing this article we learned with great sadness of the passing of our friend and colleague Christof Rumpf. We dedicate this article to his memory.

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