A linear logic treatment of phrase structure grammars for unbounded dependencies

Abstract

A number of researchers have proposed applications of Girard’s Linear Logic [7] to computational linguistics. Most have focused primarily on the connection between linear logic and categorial grammars. In this work we show how linear logic can be used to provide an attractive encoding of phrase structure grammars for parsing structures involving unbounded dependencies. The resulting grammars are closely related to Generalized Phrase Structure Grammars [4, 5]. As part of the presentation we show how a variety of issues, such as island and coordination constraints can be dealt with in this model.