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FEATURES AND AUGMENTED GRAMMARS Overall

Augmented context-free grammars use features to systematically address agreement phenomena in natural languages. Features are attributes associated with constituents that capture linguistic properties like number (singular or plural). Feature structures represent constituents and their properties, like an article being singular. Augmented rules use variables in feature values to flexibly handle ambiguity and apply to different situations while maintaining a compact grammar size. This prevents needing separate rules for different forms and allows incorporating additional details without proliferation of rules.

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1K views3 pages

FEATURES AND AUGMENTED GRAMMARS Overall

Augmented context-free grammars use features to systematically address agreement phenomena in natural languages. Features are attributes associated with constituents that capture linguistic properties like number (singular or plural). Feature structures represent constituents and their properties, like an article being singular. Augmented rules use variables in feature values to flexibly handle ambiguity and apply to different situations while maintaining a compact grammar size. This prevents needing separate rules for different forms and allows incorporating additional details without proliferation of rules.

Uploaded by

davad25089
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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FEATURES AND AUGMENTED GRAMMARS:

• Natural languages exhibit agreement restrictions between words and phrases.


• Example: The grammatical incorrectness of the NP "a men" arises from a disagreement between
the singular article "a" and the plural noun "men."
• Words in sentences need to match, like using the right singular or plural forms.
• To handle this, we make our grammar rules smarter.
• The extended formalism accommodates features to address agreement phenomena
systematically.
• Features cover various agreement aspects such as subject-verb agreement, gender agreement
for pronouns, and constraints between phrase heads and complements.
• Features are like tags telling us more about words, such as if they're singular or plural.
• Features serve as attributes associated with constituents, capturing linguistic properties.
• Example Feature: NUMBER, with possible values like "s" (singular) or "p" (plural).

Augmented CFG Rule for Agreement:

• Augmented CFG rules, such as :

NP -> ART N only when NUMBER1 agrees with NUMBER2,

elegantly express conditions for agreement.

This specific rule ensures that a valid noun phrase comprises an article followed by a noun when the
number feature of the article aligns with the number feature of the noun.

• This one rule is equivalent to two CFG rules that


• would use different terminal symbols for encoding singular and plural forms of all noun phrases,
such as

NP-SING -> ART-SING N-SING


NP-PLURAL -> ART-PLURAL N-PLURAL

• Feature systems prevent rule duplication by efficiently expressing agreement constraints.


• Without features, the alternative would involve duplicating CFG rules for distinct forms (e.g.,
singular and plural), significantly inflating the size of the grammar.
• Instead of having lots of rules for different word forms, we use features to keep things simple.

Feature Structure:

• A constituent is characterized as a feature structure, a mapping of features to values defining its


linguistic properties.
• Features are like labels, telling us what kind of word something is.
• Example Feature Structure:

ART1: (CAT ART

ROOT a

NUMBER s).
• This says it is a constituent in the category ART that has as its root the word a and is singular.
• We write down features in an easy way, like saying, "This is an article (ART), the main word is 'a,'
and it's singular."
• An abbreviated form, emphasizing the category (CAT) value, provides simplicity and a clear link
to standard context-free grammars.

Abbreviation:

ART1: (ART ROOT a NUMBER s).

Feature structures extend their utility to represent larger constituents. Feature structures can
themselves be values, and integers like 1, 2, 3 represent subconstituents.

For example, the NP constituent for "a fish" can be represented as

NP1:(NP NUMBER s 1 (ART ROOT a NUMBER s) 2 (N ROOT fish NUMBER s)).

This representation aligns with a parse tree where features 1 and 2 correspond to subconstituent links.

• Rules in augmented grammars use feature structures instead of simple categories.


• Variables in feature values allow rules to apply to different situations.
• For example, a rule for simple noun phrases could state that an NP consists of an ART and an N
with matching NUMBER features.

(NP NUMBER ?n) - (ART NUMBER ?n) (N NUMBER ?n)

• Variables also handle ambiguity, such as words with multiple meanings.


• For instance, the word "fish" could be singular or plural. Using variables as values allows for
flexibility, and constrained variables limit choices to a specified list.
• Using a variable as the value for the NUMBER feature, like

(N ROOT fish NUMBER ?n{sp})


allows for flexibility.

• The simplified representation could be (N ROOT fish NUMBER {s p}).


• If the set of feature values is finite, the expressive power remains equivalent to a context-free
grammar.
• If we don't limit the values, these grammars can be very powerful. But in real use, standard
methods handle them fine.

Advantages of Feature Systems:

• Features maintain the size of the augmented grammar, preventing exponential growth, while
effectively representing diverse agreement constraints.
• We can add more details (like who a word is talking about) without making our rules too many.
• This approach allows for the incorporation of additional features (e.g., person agreement)
without proportionally expanding the grammar size.

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