Norwegian HPSG grammar NorSource

For the web demo of the Norwegian HPSG grammar Norsource, the sentences below can be used for illustration.

More complete test suites for basic verbal constructions are found in

License

[WWW] Lesser General Public License For Linguistic Resources

History and Purpose of the grammar

NorSource is a so-called ‘deep’ computational grammar (‘DG’) of Norwegian, developed throughout the last 12 years. The grammar has been developed with a view to the following overall desiderata:

Desideratum 1. Encoding of Linguistic Meaning

As a ‘generic’ information repository, the DG should have a semantic component from which a Reasoning capacity can be deduced for any domain of discourse – possibly with addition of concepts for the specific domains. It should be like a Fregean ‘Sinn’, in acting as a function from domains of use to models of interpretation. However, contrary to most artificial ‘reasoning’ devices, a DG must span the full complexity of a natural language, reflecting the size of its vocabulary and its grammar complexity. In this respect,the DG can also be seen as the materialization of a Generative Grammar, in the original sense of that notion.

Desideratum 2. Cross-grammar Generality

The content of the DG should to as large an extent as possible be phrased in terms used, or alignable with terms used, in other grammars and for other languages, thereby enabling linguistic comparison using the DG. By ‘content of the DG’ we mean both the content of the grammar files (formalism, notions used) and the content of its parse productions.

Desideratum 3. Interoperability

The DG should attain as much interoperability with other applications as possible. In general, what a digital ubiquitous research environment for linguistics should enable is an interconnectivity of data, researchers and processing facilities whereby from any point in an overall structure of components, a contribution can have its ramifications immediately implemented throughout the entire structure. Such interconnectivity will have to be manifested both on an ‘outer’ level enabling data flow and easy access, and on an ‘inner’ level ensuring information exchange from one system component to another. For a DG, thus, its files and productions (parses, etc.) should be transportable to other applications, and the codes in which its files are written should be readable by other applications, or able to be mapped into other codes.

Desideratum 4. Sustainability

The DG should be in such a format, and be situated in such an over-all environment, that as much as possible of its capacity can be retained, independently of particular persons maintaining it or particular physical environments.