Graduate Course: GF (Grammatical Framework)

Aarne Ranta
Wed Oct 24 09:49:27 2007

GSLT, NGSLT, and Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University.

Autumn Term 2007.

News

24/10 Tomorrow's session starts at 8.15. A detailed plan has been added to the table below. Material (new chapters) will appear later today. It will explain some of the files in

12/9 The course starts tomorrow at 8.00. A detailed plan for the day is right below. Don't forget to

31/8 Revised the description of the one- and five-point variants.

21/8 Course mailing list started. To subscribe, send a mail to gf-subscribe at gslt hum gu se (replacing spaces by dots except around the word at, where the spaces are just removed, and the word itself is replaced by the at symbol).

20/8/2007 Schedule. The course will start on Thursday 13 September in Room C430 at the Humanities Building of Gothenburg University ("Humanisten").

Plan

First week (13-14/9)

Time Subject Assignment
Thu 8.00-9.30 Chapters 1-3 Hello and Food in a new language
Thu 10.00-11.30 Chapters 3-4 Foods in a new language
Thu 13.15-14.45 Chapter 5 ExtFoods in a new language
Thu 15.15-16.45 Chapters 6-7 straight code compiler
Fri 8.00-9.30 Chapters 8 application in Haskell or Java

Second week (25/10)

Time Subject Assignment
Thu 8.15-9.45 Chapters 13-15 mini resource in a new language
Thu 10.15-11.45 Chapters 12,16 query system for a new domain
Thu 13.15-14.45 presentations explain your own project

The structure of each lecture will be the following:

In order for this to work out, it is important that enough many have a working GF installation, including the directory examples/tutorial. This directory is included in the Darcs version, as well as in the updated binary packages from 12 September.

Purpose

GF (Grammatical Framework) is a grammar formalism, i.e. a special-purpose programming language for writing grammars. It is suitable for many natural language processing tasks, in particular,

The goal of the course is to develop an understanding of GF and practical skills in using it.

Contents

The course consists of two modules. The first module is a one-week intensive course (during the first intensive week of GSLT), which is as such usable as a one-week intensive course for doctoral studies, if completed with a small course project.

The second module is a larger programming project, written by each student (possibly working in groups) during the Autumn term. The projects are discussed during the second intensive week of GSLT (see schedule), and presented at a date that will be set later.

The first module goes through the basics of GF, including

The lectures follow a draft of GF book. It contains a heavily updated version os the GF Tutorial; thus the on-line tutorial is not adequate for this course. To get the course book, join the course mailing list.

Those who just want to do the first module will write a simple application as their course work during and after the first intensive week.

Those who continue with the second module will choose a more substantial project. Possible topics are

Prerequisites

Experience in programming. No earlier natural language processing or functional programming experience is necessary.

The course is thus suitable both for GSLT and NGSLT students, and for graduate students in computer science.

We will in particular welcome students from the Baltic countries who wish to build resources for their own language in GF.