This volume collects papers that are at the
cutting edge of research in computational as well
as theoretical linguistics. As all of the papers
represent research areas in which Ronald M. Kaplan
has made foundational contributions, the
papers in the volume represent a tribute to the
vital role he has played in the development of
computational linguistic research and linguistic
theory, particularly within Lexical-Functional
Grammar (LFG).
Part one, “Generation and Translation,” contains
contributions on the design of the most optimal
architecture for machine translation, parsing and
generation, as well as proposals for a machine
translation system which successfully combines
statistical methods with deep natural language
processing.
Part two, “Grammar Engineering and Applications,”
focuses on practical natural language processing
such as using the LFG grammar development
platform XLE for implementing tutoring systems,
building large lexicons and grammars, exploring
interactions of tagging and parsing, and building
large grammars and lexical resources from
treebanks.
Part three, “Formal Issues,” examines difficult
linguistic data and their treatment in formal
linguistic theory. These papers range from
contributions on Optimality Theoretical vs.
finite-state treatments of Finnish prosody to
mixed-category constructions to theories of
discourse and coordination. Foundational issues
addressed include interactions between morphology
and syntax in complex predicates, coordination
and agreement, and the resolution of coordination
asymmetries via f-structure analysis.
Part four, “Semantics and Inference,” examines
the fundamental issue of compositionality in
syntactic and semantic theory, and presents
cutting edge research on theoretical and
practical issues in mapping from linguistic
structures to knowledge representations.
