On parsing partially free word order languages based on petri nets and montague grammer

Abstract

In this thesis, an approach is described to parsing and logical translation that was inspired by Lee, K.``s work on AMG (Augmented Montague Grammar) for case languages, and execution rules of Petri nets. Each grammar rule consists of a syntactic part that specifies an acceptable fragment of a parse tree, and a semantic part that specifies how the logical forms corresponding to the constituents of the fragment are to be combined to yield the logical form for the fragment in the intensional logic. The propoed model, SPNG (Semantic Petri Net Grammar) is built based on Petri nets and its basic control structure resembles that of Petri net. But, its data structure and operational rules are designed to be adaptable to AMG. Besides this sound linguistic background, the parsing with SPNG satisfies a computational aspect, Determinism Hypothesis of Marcus, M.P. with its coherent structure. Hence, partially free word order languages are parsed strictly deterministically in SPNG.