Formal English Grammar

1. School of Computing FACULTY OF ENGINEERING Formal English Grammar COMP3310 Natural Language Processing Eric Atwell, Language Research Group

2. Outline for Grammar/Parsing • Context-Free Grammars and Constituency • Some common CFG phenomena for English • Sentence-level constructions • Standard parts of a sentence: NP, PP, VP • Problems: coordination, agreement, subcategorization, movement, … • Top-down and Bottom-up Parsing • Chart Parsing

3. Review • Parts of Speech • Basic syntactic/morphological categories that words belong to • Part of Speech tagging • Assigning parts of speech to all the words in a sentence

4. Syntax • Syntax: from Greek syntaxis “setting out together, arrangement’’ • Refers to the way words are arranged together, and the relationship between them. • Distinction: • Prescriptive grammar: how people ought to talk • Descriptive grammar: how they do talk • Goal of syntax is to model the knowledge of that people unconsciously have about the grammar of their native language

5. Syntax • Why should we care? • Grammar checkers • Question answering • Information extraction • Machine translation

6. key ideas of syntax • Constituency (we’ll spend most of our time on this) • Subcategorization • Grammatical relations Plus one part we won’t have time for: • Movement/long-distance dependency

7. Context-Free Grammars (CFG) • Capture constituency and ordering • Ordering: • What are the rules that govern the ordering of words and bigger units in the language? • Constituency: How words group into units and how the various kinds of units behave

8. Constituency • E.g., Noun phrases (NPs) • Three parties from Brooklyn • A high-class spot such as Mindy’s • The Broadway coppers • They • Harry the Horse • The reason he comes into the Hot Box • How do we know these form a constituent?

9. Constituency (II) • They can all appear before a verb: • Three parties from Brooklyn arrive… • A high-class spot such as Mindy’s attracts… • The Broadway coppers love… • They sit • But individual words can’t always appear before verbs: • *from arrive… • *as attracts… • *the is • *spot is… • Must be able to state generalizations like: • Noun phrases occur before verbs

10. Constituency (III) • Preposing and postposing: • On September 17th, I’d like to fly from Atlanta to Denver • I’d like to fly on September 17th from Atlanta to Denver • I’d like to fly from Atlanta to Denver on September 17th. • But not: • *On September, I’d like to fly 17th from Atlanta to Denver • *On I’d like to fly September 17th from Atlanta to Denver

11. CFG example • S -> NP VP • NP -> Det NOMINAL • NOMINAL -> Noun • VP -> Verb • Det -> a • Noun -> flight • Verb -> left

12. CFGs: set of rules • S -> NP VP • This says that there are units called S, NP, and VP in this language • That an S consists of an NP followed immediately by a VP • Doesn’t say that that’s the only kind of S • Nor does it say that this is the only place that NPs and VPs occur

13. Generativity • As with Finite State Automatons, you can view these rules as either analysis or synthesis machines • Generate strings in the language • Reject strings not in the language • Impose structures (trees) on strings in the language • Used to define grammatical vs. ungrammatical sentences • A “generative grammar” is NOT only for producing/generating of output sentences, • it is also for analysis/parsing of input sentences

14. Derivations • A derivation is a sequence of rules applied to a string that accounts for that string • Covers all the elements in the string • Covers only the elements in the string

15. S NP VP NP Nominal Pronoun Verb Article Noun Noun I prefer a morning flight Derivations as Trees

16. CFGs more formally • A context-free grammar has 4 parameters (“is a 4-tuple”) • A set of non-terminal symbols (“variables”) N • A set of terminal symbols  (disjoint from N) • A set of productions P, each of the form • A ->  • Where A is a non-terminal and  is a string of symbols from the infinite set of strings (  N)* • A designated start symbol S

17. Parsing • Parsing is the process of taking a sentence and a grammar and returning one (or more) parse tree(s) for that sentence. • (more on parsing algorithms later…) • If the parser fails – it cannot build a parse-tree for the sentence – then EITHER the sentence is ungrammatical OR the grammar is “not good enough” (it is hard to write down every grammar rule for general English!)

18. Context- free? • The notion of context in Context Free Grammars has nothing to do with the ordinary meaning of the word context • All it really means is that the non-terminal on the left-hand side of a rule is out there all by itself (free of context) A -> B C Means that I can rewrite an A as a B followed by a C regardless of the context in which A is found

19. Key Constituents of English grammar • Sentences • Noun phrases • Verb phrases • Prepositional phrases

20. Sentence-Types • Declaratives: A plane left S -> NP VP • Imperatives: Leave! S -> VP • Yes-No Questions: Did the plane leave? S -> Aux NP VP • WH Questions: When did the plane leave? S -> WH Aux NP VP

21. NPs • NP -> Pronoun • I came, you saw it, they conquered • NP -> Proper-Noun • Los Angeles is west of Texas • John Hennessy is the president of Stanford • NP -> Det Noun • The president • NP -> Nominal • Nominal -> Noun Noun • A morning flight to Denver

22. PPs • PP -> Preposition NP • From LA • To the store • On Tuesday morning • With lunch

23. Recursion • We’ll have to deal with rules such as the following where the non-terminal on the left also appears somewhere on the right (directly) NP -> NP PP [[The flight] [to Boston]] VP -> VP PP [[departed Miami] [at noon]]

24. Recursion • Of course, this is what makes syntax (and parsing) interesting Flights from Denver Flights from Denver to Miami Flights from Denver to Miami in February Flights from Denver to Miami in February on a Friday Flights from Denver to Miami in February on a Friday under $300 Flights from Denver to Miami in February on a Friday under $300 with lunch

25. Recursion [[Flights] [from Denver]] [[[Flights] [from Denver]] [to Miami]] [[[[Flights] [from Denver]] [to Miami]] [in February]] [[[[[Flights] [from Denver]] [to Miami]] [in February]] [on a Friday]] Etc. NP -> NP PP

26. Implications of recursion and context-freeness • If you have a rule like • VP -> V NP • It only cares that the thing after the verb is an NP It doesn’t have to know about the internal affairs of that NP

27. The point • VP -> V NP • (I) hate flights from Denver flights from Denver to Miami flights from Denver to Miami in February flights from Denver to Miami in February on a Friday flights from Denver to Miami in February on a Friday under $300 flights from Denver to Miami in February on a Friday under $300 with lunch

28. S NP VP NP Nom Pro Verb Det Noun Noun I prefer a morning flight Bracketed Notation • [S [NP [PRO I]] [VP [V prefer] [NP [Det a] [Nom [N morning] [N flight] ] ] ] ]

29. Coordination Constructions • S -> S and S • John went to NY and Mary followed him • NP -> NP and NP • VP -> VP and VP • … • In fact the right rule for English is X -> X and X (Metarule) However we can say “He was longwinded and a bully.”

30. Problems • Agreement • Subcategorization • Movement (for want of a better term)

31. This dog Those dogs NP  Determiner Noun This dog eats Those dogs eat S  NP VP NP  Det Noun VP  Verb *This dogs *Those dog *This dog eat *Those dogs eats Agreement

32. S -> NP VP NP -> Det Noun VP -> Verb … but we need duplicate rules for Sg (singular) and Pl (plural) SgS -> SgNP SgVP PlS -> PlNp PlVP SgNP -> SgDet SgNom PlNP -> PlDet PlNom PlVP -> PlV NP SgVP ->SgV Np … It works and stays within the formal constraints of CFGs But it’s ugly – lots of duplication Possible CFG Solution

33. Subcategorization • Sneeze: John sneezed • *John sneezed the book • Say: You said [United has a flight]S • Prefer: I prefer [to leave earlier]TO-VP • *I prefer United has a flight • Give: Give [me]NP[a cheaper fare]NP • Help: Can you help [me]NP[with a flight]PP • *Give with a flight

34. Subcategorization • Subcategorization expresses the constraints that a predicate (verb) places on the number and syntactic types of arguments it wants to take (occur with).

35. So? • So the various rules for VPs overgenerate • They permit the presence of strings containing verbs and arguments that don’t go together • For example: • VP -> V NP • therefore Sneezed the book is a VP since “sneeze” is a verb and “the book” is a valid NP

36. Possible CFG Solution • VP -> V • VP -> V NP • VP -> V NP PP • … • VP -> IntransV • VP -> TransV NP • VP -> TransVwPP NP PP • … • It works and stays within the formal constraints of CFGs • But it’s ugly – lots of duplication • Subcat constraints are really SEMANTIC not syntactic

37. Movement • Core example • My travel agent booked the flight • [[My travel agent]NP [booked [the flight]NP]VP]S • i.e. “book” is a straightforward transitive verb. It expects a single NP within the VP as an argument, and a single NP as the subject.

38. Movement • What about? • Which flight do you want me to have the travel agent book? • The direct object argument to “book” isn’t appearing in the right place. It is in fact a long way from where its supposed to appear. • And note that it’s separated from its verb by 2 other verbs. • Some theories of grammar say there is a CFG “base/deep” grammar, plus extra rules/mechanisms for “movement” • Eg read Noam Chomsky 1957 “Syntactic Structures”

39. CFGs: a summary • CFGs appear to be just about what we need to account for a lot of basic syntactic structure in English. • But there are problems: coordination, agreement, subcategorization, movement, … … maybe these can be dealt with adequately, although not elegantly, by staying within the CFG framework. • There are simpler, more elegant, solutions that take us out of the CFG framework (beyond its formal power). Syntactic theories: TG, HPSG, LFG, GPSG, etc.