GRASP: Parsing of Grammatical Relations for Databases of Spoken Language Interactions

该奖项支持口语对话中句法结构计算系统的开发，特别强调亲子对话。这个新系统被称为GRASP（自发协议的语法关系分析），它用通过依赖结构连接的语法关系的计算取代了传统的完整解析树的计算。儿童语言数据交换系统（CHILDES）数据库中的所有英语语料库都采用了GRASP。它用一种更可靠的自动方法取代了对常用子语言配置文件（如IPSyn、DSS和LARSP）的繁琐手工计算。GRASP能够实现更高的解析精度，因为它可以专注于与这些概要文件最相关的语法结构的计算。为了验证准确性，将GRASP的结果与8个实验室的手工编码结果进行了比较。详细分析了GRASP与手工编码结果之间的偏差，以诊断提高系统精度的方法。目前的解析器主要依赖于一个简单的统计解析器，用于在CHILDES中Eve和Sachs语料库中的母系话语中训练的语法关系。分析表明，对母亲输入中的语法关系的训练优于对包含儿童话语的输入的训练，即使目标话语是儿童话语。在结构的附加模块强调基于规则的语法关系结构和鲁棒性规则。这些评分档案的自动化使双语和少数民族人群、说话迟缓者和有听力问题的儿童的学者和临床专业人员受益。此外，所计算的语法关系依赖结构是语言习得理论的核心，如主位角色结构、绑定、相对化、互补和移动。被编码的语法关系的具体身份是通过密切关注文献中传统重要性的结构以及通过公开征求张贴在儿童语言公告栏上的其他建议关系来确定的。在巩固这些新的分析方法和自动化相关的儿童语言测量工具之后，该项目将把结果扩展到其他语言的语言发展，以及成人口语语料库。最后的系统将通过促进网上语料库的网络分析和打包成一个简单的桌面应用程序来传播。

This award supports the development of a system for computation of syntactic structure in spoken language conversations with a specific emphasis on parent-child conversations. The new system, called GRASP (Grammatical Relations Analysis for Spontaneous Protocols), replaces the traditional computation of full parse trees with the computation of grammatical relations linked through a dependency structure. GRASP is being applied to all the English language corpora in the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) database. It replaces tedious hand calculation of commonly used child language profiles such as IPSyn, DSS, and LARSP with a more reliable automatic method. GRASP is able to achieve significantly greater parsing accuracy, since it can concentrate on the computation of syntactic structures that are most relevant to these profiles. To validate accuracy, results from GRASP are compared with hand-coded results contributed by 8 laboratories. Deviations between GRASP and hand-coded results are analyzed in detail to diagnose ways to increase system accuracy. The current parser relies primarily on a simple statistical parser for grammatical relations trained on maternal utterances in the Eve and Sachs corpora in CHILDES. Analyses have shown that training on the grammatical relations in the maternal input is superior to training on inputs that include children's utterances, even when the target utterances are child utterances. Additional modules in construction emphasize rule-based grammatical relation construction and robustness rules.Automation of these scoring profiles benefits academics and clinical professionals working with bilingual and minority populations, delayed talkers, and children with hearing problems. In addition, the grammatical relation dependency structures being computed are at the core of the language acquisition theory, such as thematic role structure, binding, relativization, complementation, and movement. The specific identity of the grammatical relations being encoded was determined by paying close attention to structures of traditional importance in the literature and by an open solicitation of additional suggested relations posted to the child language bulletin board. After consolidating these new parsing methods and automating the relevant child language measurement instruments, the project will extend the results to language development in other languages, as well as to adult spoken language corpora. The final system will be disseminated by facilitating web-based analyses of online corpora and by packaging into a simple desktop application.