MatrixDoc_Gender

Documentation for the Grammar Matrix Customization Gender Library

Introduction

This document presents background information on the gender library of the Grammar Matrix Customization System (Bender et al., 2002; Bender and Flickinger, 2005; Bender et al., 2010). General instructions on using the questionnaire can be found here.

Gender Options

[ This documentation is under construction. When it is more complete, this section should describe the effects of the various options provided in this library in terms of the behavior of the grammar. It is also a good place for tips on how to get the most from the library. ]

The gender library allows the user to specify the range of values for the feature GENDER that will be available elsewhere in the customization system and in the resulting grammar.

On the gender page in Matrix Customization you are asked to describe the gender hierarchy in your language. The number or genders and the complexity of gender hierarchy are different for every language. The number of genders and their supertypes that you can enter in questionnaire is unlimited. Such flexibility of Matrix customization mechanism allows user to cover languages with extensive gender hierarchies.

Using dropdown menu, you will add genders and their supertypes as applicable to your language. In terms of filling out the questionnaire for Grammar Matrix, we are dealing with gender only insofar as it is expressed grammatically, i.e. through some form of agreement. If your gender does not express gender grammatically through agreement (for example, Chinese language), please leave this section blank and move on to the next page. Below are examples of options chosen for two languages with different gender hierarchies:

(1). Russian language with a very straightforward 'one-level' gender hierarchy. It has 3 genders: feminine, masculine, and neuter genders, all of which have "gender" as their supertype.

• Gender	Supertype
  Feminine	gender
  Masculine	gender
  Neuter	gender

(2). Tamil language with a more complex 'two-level' gender hierarchy. It has four genders, with rational gender further subdivided into feminine and masculine genders.

• Gender	Supertype
  Rational	gender
  Feminine	Rational
  Masculine	Rational
  Neuter	gender

For more information on how to use the questionnaire to define values for gender feature in your language, please refer to the Gender page in Matrix Customization.

For more information on the implementation of gender in Grammar Matrix please refer to the next section Analyses.

Gender Analyses

Your starter grammar uses feature GENDER, the values of which are based on the choices you made on the gender customization page. Note that GENDER is a feature of the nominal INDEX. Making GENDER a feature of semantic INDEX instead of syntactic HEAD allows for correct semantic representation of gender in your starter grammar.

The choices you make in the questionnaire are recorded in the choices file, which is a Unicode text file. Below is an example of a gender section in the choices file of a language with feminine, masculine, and neuter genders:

section=gender
  gender1_name=masc
    gender1_supertype1_name=gender
  gender2_name=fem
    gender2_supertype1_name=gender
  gender3_name=neut
    gender3_supertype1_name=gender

This will be reflected in the your_language_name.tdl file:

png :+ [ PER person,
    NUM number, <<BR>>
    GEND gender,<<BR>>
    ANIMATION animation ].

;;; Gender

 gender := *top*.<<BR>>
 masc := gender.<<BR>>
 fem := gender.<<BR>>
 neut := gender.

The values you assign to GENDER feature will be available to use later in the customization system, especially the Morphology and Lexicon pages. Gender will appear as one of the features of the lexical rule types on Morphology page and as one of the features of the lexical types on Lexicon page.

The choices you make on the gender customization page, will also affect the lexical types (your_language_name.tdl file), lexical rules (lrules.tdl file), and inflectional rules (irules.tdl file).

GENDER is a feature often involved in agreement phenomena. These are handled through the lexicon and morphology libraries. The analyses of agreement implemented in the Grammar Matrix are described in Drellishak 2009, Section 5.2.

For more information regarding the analyses implemented in the gender library please refer to Drellishak 2009, Section 5.3.

Upcoming Work

• [ This documentation is under construction. When it is more complete, this section should describe any modifications to or enhancements of this library that are either in progress or planned. ]

Gender implementation seems rather straightforward and the flexibility of Grammar Matrix customization mechanism already allows for an unlimited number of genders and their supertypes. One possible direction of the upcoming work could be to allow the linguist to revise, if new information or a more complete linguistic analysis appears (Bender & Flickinger 2005, p. 2). (VG: or has it been already done? not sure what exactly is meant by revision here. we can make changes to the grammar already. so which revisions cannot we still make? if "this" has been done, we can just take this sentence out and add something else there)

References

Bender, E., & Flickinger, D. 2005. Rapid prototyping of scalable grammars: Towards modularity in extensions to a language-independent core. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing IJCNLP-05 (Posters/Demos), Jeju Island, Korea.

Drellishak, Scott. 2009. Widespread but Not Universal: Improving the Typological Coverage of the Grammar Matrix. PhD thesis, University of Washington.