A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo
A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo
A generic framework for Arabic to English machine ... - Acsu Buffalo
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3<br />
Role and Reference Grammar (RRG)<br />
This chapter is based largely on material taken from (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997), which<br />
explains the theory behind Role and Reference Grammar. Role and Reference Grammar<br />
(RRG) is a model of grammar developed by William Foley and Robert Van Valin, Jr. in<br />
the 1980s, which incorporates many of the points of view of current functional grammar<br />
theories. We have chosen RRG because it has been shown <strong>to</strong> be flexable and universal<br />
in the creation of parsers <strong>for</strong> <strong>English</strong> (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). We wish <strong>to</strong> apply<br />
this success <strong>to</strong> MT in order <strong>to</strong> discover its importance and demonstate its viability with<br />
accuracy of translation.<br />
In RRG, the description of a sentence in a particular language is <strong>for</strong>mulated in terms<br />
of its logical structure and communicative functions, and the grammatical procedures<br />
that are available in the language <strong>for</strong> the expression of these meanings. The main fea-<br />
tures of RRG are the use of lexical decomposition, based upon predicate semantics, an<br />
analysis of clause structure and the use of a set of thematic roles organized in<strong>to</strong> a hier-<br />
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