How to write disambiguation files

Constraint grammar

The main introduction to CG-2 is Tapanainen 1996. Karlsson & al 1992 gives a good introduction to CG-1, and also the most thorough presentation of the philosophy behind the constraint grammar framework.

The projects uses the CG-2 formalism, and this formalism is presentation below. The concrete implementation is vislcg.

The structure of the disambiguation file

The disambiguation file has the suffix .rle, in our case it is called sme-dis.rle, smj-dis.rle, etc. The file consists of the following sections (an additional section CORRECTIONS may also be used, it then follows the CONSTRAINTS sections):

• DELIMITERS
• SETS
• MAPPINGS
• CONSTRAINTS (there are several CONSTRAINT sections

The delimiters

There are four delimiters, ".", "?", "" and "!". The section thus contains the following line only:

DELIMITERS = "<.>" "<!>" "<?>" "<¶>";

The last delimiter is inserted by the corpus processor in order to single out titles and other headings.

The lists and sets

This section is introduced with the heading SETS. Note that this heading must be removed in order to run the parser with Connexor's parser mdis.

The tags are introduced to the parser as lists and sets. Tags or tag combinations that are not introduced here must be referred to within parentheses. Lists and sets are defined according to the following principles:

1. Every grammatical tag used in the rules as such should be declared as a one-membered LIST carrying its own name. This in order to be able to refer to them without using parenteses. Thus, we now have SELECT N IF (-1 V); instead of SELECT (N) IF (-1 (V)).
2. Tag combinations, such as (N Sg) or (Pron Pers Sg1 Nom) are not defined as single-membered LISTs, but referred to as tags (hence in parentheses). Note: Should frequent tag combinations get a list and thereby a shorter name? e.g. LIST MUN = (Pron Pers Sg1 Nom); ?
3. Sets of different tags and/or combinations are declared as sets, e.g. SET ADVLCASE = Ill | Loc | Com | Ess. Note: Should they be declared as lists, e.g. LIST ADVLCASE = Ill Loc Com Ess ;? In this case they are of course a list of tags, and not a set of (atomic) sets. Which method is preferrable?
4. Finally, the sets on which there are other operations than OR (such as + and -) are declared as SETs.

barriers

Barriers are used to constrain the scope of rule contexts. By now, there are so many complex barrier sets, that a systematic documentation of barriers, their linguistic implications and consequences of their use might be necessary for rule writers. Often enough, we barriers turned out to implement other linguistic barriers than originally expected.

Another fact is that until now complex barriers do not exist. So, we actually talk about signal words rather than barriers denoting a particular construction.

CC

1. can introduce another main clause
2. can introduce another noun phrase in coordination
3. can introduce another modifier of a noun phrase within a noun phrase

SET S-BOUNDARY = CP | CS | SEMICOL | COL ;
# remember that (",") and CC are potential sentence boundaries, too

SET NP-BOUNDARY = CC | COMMA ;
# remember that those are potential sentence boundaries, too

SET BOUNDARY = S-BOUNDARY OR NP-BOUNDARY ;

SET CRD = COMMA | CC | NEGFOC | XGO ;
# coordinators

Since we get formalism caused problems, such as eingschobene phrases, that again fullfill other barrier criteria and therefore have the consequence that a certain construction is not recognized.

SET INTR = REL | MO | PUNCT-LEFT ;
# interupters

SET NPNH:
This set - a negation of the set PRE-NP-HEAD - originally denotes words, that are no possible modifiers of an NP. But: sometimes NPNH is used as a BARRIER at a point of time (or rather order) in the rule file we still have the Acc option to Gen, if NPNH is used as a BARRIER we do not get the rule to work since Acc is not a member of the set PRE-NP-HEAD.

The constraints

The constraints of the North Saami file are documented here.

The format of the constraint rules

tbw.