6.464 FYI: FRACAS project, Grammar Laboratories, Chomsky, LaTex

The Linguist List linguist at tam2000.tamu.edu
Tue Mar 28 19:25:25 UTC 1995


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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-464. Tue 28 Mar 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 242
 
Subject: 6.464 FYI: FRACAS project, Grammar Laboratories, Chomsky, LaTex
 
 
Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at emunix.emich.edu>
 
Asst. Editors: Ron Reck <rreck at emunix.emich.edu>
               Ann Dizdar <dizdar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
               Ljuba Veselinova <lveselin at emunix.emich.edu>
               Annemarie Valdez <avaldez at emunix.emich.edu>
 
-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------
 
1)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 95 12:33:51 GMT
From: poesio at cogsci.ed.ac.uk
Subject: Correction to announcement about WWW site
 
2)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 95 21:06:32 +0100
From: beskow at ling.gu.se (Bjoern Beskow)
Subject: FYI: Grammar laboratories for Macintosh
 
3)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 10:16:57 -0500
From: doughert at acf4.NYU.EDU (doughert)
Subject: Chomsky's grammar in Prolog
 
4)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:59:05 +0100
From: KNAPPEN at VKPMZD.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE
Subject: Re: 6.408 Sum: Latex on PC's
 
-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
 
1)
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 95 12:33:51 GMT
From: poesio at cogsci.ed.ac.uk
Subject: Correction to announcement about WWW site
 
 
I noticed that in the announcement of the WWW site of the FRACAS project that
came out in the list (LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-390. Sun 19 Mar 1995), the `tilde'
character "~" was changed into a `percent' character `%', so that the
URL, that should have read:
 
      http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~fracas/
                                 ^THIS SHOULD BE A TILDE
 
came out as :
 
      http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/%fracas/
 
I will add that the same thing happened when the announcement was posted on the
`LN' list, and I was told then that the problem was due to the fact that the
listserver software for `LN' runs on IBM software, so that ASCII characters
must be converted into the character format used by IBM computers (EBCDIC, I
think), and some piece of software somewhere does this conversion
incorrectly. This means of course that this announcement, as well, may come out
incorrectly when posted on the list - the two instances of `tilde' will be
replaced by two percent signs - hence my use of explicit names so that the
readers of the list may understand what I mean.
 
Thanks,
 
   Massimo Poesio
 
   University of Edinburgh           |  Email:  poesio at cogsci.ed.ac.uk
   Centre for Cognitive Science      |  Phone:  +44-31-650-6988
   2 Buccleuch Place                 |  Fax:    +44-31-650-4587
   Edinburgh, EH8 9LW, Scotland, UK  |  http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~poesio/
 
 
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2)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 95 21:06:32 +0100
From: beskow at ling.gu.se (Bjoern Beskow)
Subject: FYI: Grammar laboratories for Macintosh
 
Since we have received a lot of questions about the Grammar
Laboratories lately, we hope we are excused for sending this
information once more.
 
Cheers,
 
Bjoern Beskow
Linguistic Instruments
 
                 *****   Grammar Laboratories   *****
                          for the Macintosh
 
                                  by
 
                 *****  LINGUISTIC INSTRUMENTS  *****
 
                       A Campus Company at the
                      Department of Linguistics
                         Goteborg University
 
Linguistic Instruments is a small company specializing in research
instruments and teaching programs for linguists. In our series of
*Grammar Laboratories* for the Macintosh we currently offer four
packages:
 
  - Phrase Structure Grammar Laboratory
  - Definite Clause Grammar Laboratory
  - PATR Laboratory
  - Categorial Grammar Laboratory
 
The Grammar Laboratories are systems for writing grammars in a form
that may be manipulated by a computer. They are designed as aids for
students to explore formal grammars for natural language. They help
the student understand the relationship between strings, rules, and
trees, to grasp the concepts of parsing and generation, the notions of
syntactic ambiguity and recursion, as well as other important concepts
of general and computational linguistics.
 
For the researcher, although the grammar laboratories should not be
regarded as full-fledged grammar development environments, they are
nevertheless useful for testing out ideas, in a quick and simple
way. Moreover, the programs are able to display analysis trees and
feature structures graphically, the graphics can be formatted in all
sorts of ways, and subsequently exported to other applications.
 
Each program has two tools, a parser and a generator. The Parser tool
parses sentences and graphically displays the corresponding categories
and trees (if any). The Generator tool accepts as input a start symbol
and a specification of a maximal tree depth, and (randomly or
systematically) generates any combination of a string, spoken
utterance, category symbol, or tree.
 
The Grammar Laboratories form an integrated package with a generic
design. Nevertheless, each laboratory has some distinguishing
features:
 
  - PSG Laboratory:  A useful tool for introductory courses. It
                     directly supports the standard notation for
                     (context-free) phrase structure grammar,
                     including conventions for optional and
                     alternative constituents.
 
  - DCG Laboratory:  An environment for Definite Clause Grammar
                     supporting variable categories, left-recursive
                     rules, and a limited use of escape to Prolog.
 
  - PATR Laboratory: Over and above the standard PATR formalism, this
                     system supports list-valued features and feature
                     structure variables. The graphical display of
                     feature structures is enhanced with colour coding
                     for reentrancy.
 
  - CG Laboratory:   Grammatical analyses can be displayed either in
                     ordinary phrase structure trees or in the special
                     kind of annotated proof trees characteristic of
                     categorial grammar.
 
The Grammar Laboratories are *real* Macintosh applications, with all
the functionality and user-friendliness that you have learned to
expect from Macintosh programs. Each package comes with printed
documentation in the form of a 20 pages booklet, as well as a
collection of sample grammars.
 
Fully functional versions of the Grammar Laboratories, freely
distributed for evaluation, can be retrieved by anonymous ftp from
the following sites:
 
        hjelmslev.ling.gu.se/pub/li/psg-laboratory-111.hqx
                                    dcg-laboratory-111.hqx
                                    patr-laboratory-111.hqx
                                    cg-laboratory-111.hqx
 
        sumex-aim.stanford.edu/info-mac/sci/psg-laboratory-111.hqx
                                            dcg-laboratory-111.hqx
                                            patr-laboratory-111.hqx
                                            cg-laboratory-111.hqx
        or at any mirror of info-mac.
 
For further information, please contact:
 
  Linguistic Instruments
  Dept of Linguistics
  Goeteborg University
  S-412 98 Goeteborg
  Sweden
 
  E-mail: li at ling.gu.se
  Fax:    +46-31-773 48 53
 
Linguistic Instruments
Bjoern Beskow           Goeteborg University
beskow at ling.gu.se       Dept. of Linguistics
Tel: +46-31-773 11 77   S-412 98 Goeteborg
Fax: +46-31-773 48 53   Sweden
 
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3)
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 10:16:57 -0500
From: doughert at acf4.NYU.EDU (doughert)
Subject: Chomsky's grammar in Prolog
 
 
 
        At New York University, we are developing programs to encode
Noam Chomsky's generative grammar (the Minimalist Theory) into Prolog.
Almost all programs run on the freeware Prolog-2 (IBM) and
Open-Prolog (Macintosh). Every program runs on Quintus and C-Prolog.
        The goal is to place a graphically intensive hypertext
document on line for use by students and researchers.
        We have placed about 1/4 of our material on our (new)
WWW site:
 
        http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics
 
        We would appreciate any comments (about theory, technical
problems, content, .jpg files, etc.) before we place the remaining
figures and hypertext on the node.
        If you could distribute this information, we would be
very appreciative.
Thank you,
Ray Dougherty
Linguistics Department
New York University
Natural Language Computing Project
 
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4)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:59:05 +0100
From: KNAPPEN at VKPMZD.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE
Subject: Re: 6.408 Sum: Latex on PC's
 
I have a minor correction to the summary: The Ymir server
 
) ymir.claremont.edu           [134.173.4.23]  [anonymous.tex.ibm_pc.emtex]
 
does not exist anymore. If you try to contact it, it denies anonymous
access.
 
 --J"org Knappen.
 
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