Paper Info
Title
DATR: a language for lexical knowledge representation
Abstract
Much recent research on the design of natural language lexicons has made use of nonmonotonic inheritance networks as originally developed for general knowledge representation purposes in Artificial Intelligence. DATR is a simple, spartan language for defining nonmonotonic inheritance networks with path/value equations, one that has been designed specifically for lexical knowledge representation. In keeping with its intendedly minimalist character, it lacks many of the constructs embodied either in general-purpose knowledge representation languages or in contemporary grammar formalisms. The present paper shows that the language is nonetheless sufficiently expressive to represent concisely the structure of lexical information at a variety of levels of linguistic analysis. The paper provides an informal example-based introduction to DATR and to techniques for its use, including finite-state transduction, the encoding of DAGs and lexical rules, and the representation of ambiguity and alternation. Sample analysis of phenomena such as inflectional syncretism and verbal subcategorization are given that show how the language can be used to squeeze out redundancy from lexical descriptions.
Year
Venue
Keywords
1996
Computational Linguistics
spartan language,natural language lexicon,lexical rule,lexical knowledge representation,general knowledge representation purpose,lexical description,nonmonotonic inheritance network,general-purpose knowledge representation language,linguistic analysis,lexical information,artificial intelligent,knowledge representation,natural language
Field
DocType
Volume
Knowledge representation and reasoning,Subcategorization,Computer science,Computational linguistics,DATR,Lexicon,Natural language,Lexical functional grammar,Artificial intelligence,Natural language processing,Linguistics,Lexical grammar
Journal
22
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
0891-2017
36
PageRank 
References 
Authors
5.35
34
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Roger Evans134455.12
Gerald Gazdar213926.96