Systemic functional grammar in natural language generation : linguistic description and computational representation

This book deals with the computational application of systemic functional grammar (SFG) for natural language generation. More particularly, it first describes the implementation of a fragment of the grammar of German in the computational framework of KOMET-PENMAN for multilingual generation. Second, it presents a specification of explicit well-formedness constraints on syntagmatic structure which are defined in the form of typed feature structures. It thus achieves a model of systemic functional grammar that unites both the stregths of systemics, such as stratification, functional diversification, the orientation to context etc., adn the kinds of syntactic generalizations that are typically found in modern, syntagmatically-focused computational grammars. Elke Teich worked as a researcher in the KOMET project for text generation at the German National Research Centre for Information Technology, Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems, Darmstadt from 1990 to 1996. She is now a Research Associate at the Institute for Applied Linguistics, Translating and Interpreting, University of the Saarland, Saarbrucken. This volume deals with the computational application of systemic functional grammar (SFG) for natural language generation. In particular, it describes the implementation of a fragment of the grammar of German in the computational framework of KOMET-PENMAN for multilingual generation. The text also presents a specification of explicit well-formedness constraints on syntagmatic structure which are defined in the form of typed feature structures. It thus achieves a model of systemic functional grammar that unites both the strengths of systemics, such as stratification, functional diversification and the orientation to context, and the kind of syntactic generalizations that are typically found in modern, syntagmatically-focused computational grammars.