Automatic grammar engineering for endangered languages based on cross-linguistic resources

语法工程是创建语言语法的计算机模型的过程，包括如何由更小的有意义的部分组成单词，如何将单词组合成句子，以及如何根据句子的结构和部分的意义来构建句子的意义。该项目通过将为经过充分研究的语言开发的计算技术、实地语言学家收集和注释的数据以及跨语言语法资源(《行话语法矩阵》)结合起来，自动创建计算语法。计算语法丰富了语言文档的结果，因为它们可以用于自动创建进一步的注释(单词结构、句子结构和含义)。以这种方式注释的文本既可以搜索感兴趣的单词形式或结构，也可以搜索不属于当前假设的示例，从而帮助语言学家更快地将重点放在感兴趣的数据上。更广泛的影响包括培训研究生和开发潜在用途的计算工具，从语言学家到濒临灭绝或资源匮乏的语言社区。聚合项目旨在将语法工程的好处带到记录濒危语言的紧迫任务中。在第二阶段，聚合项目将追求两套相关的目标：(1)扩大跨语言资源和由此产生的计算语法的覆盖面；(2)创建接口，以实现语法及其产生的注释的潜力，以及我们的语法创建系统作为实地语言学家分析工具的中间产出。整个系统及其接口是通用工具，旨在将计算处理的能力带给领域语言学家。为了确保这些工具的广泛适用性，将使用来自不同语系和世界不同地区的三种语言作为个案研究：钦唐语(尼泊尔的基兰特语)、Matsigenka语(秘鲁的阿拉瓦克语)和阿布伊语(印度尼西亚的Alor-Pantar语)。该项目得到了美国国家科学基金会在CEISE的稳健情报计划的支持。

Grammar engineering is the process of creating computer models of the grammar of languages, including how words are formed from smaller meaningful parts, how words are put together into sentences, and how the meaning of sentences is built based on their structure and the meaning of their parts. This project is automatically creating computational grammars by combining computational techniques developed for well-studied languages, data collected and annotated by field linguists and a cross-linguistic grammar resource (the LinGO Grammar Matrix). Computational grammars enrich the results of language documentation because they can be used to automatically create further annotations (of word structure, sentence structure and meaning). Text annotated in this way can be searched both for word forms or structures of interest as well as for examples which fall outside of current hypotheses, helping linguists more rapidly zero in on the data of interest. Broader impacts include the training of graduate students and the development of computational tools of potential use to groups ranging from linguists to endangered or low resource language communities. The AGGREGATION Project aims to bring the benefits of grammar engineering to the urgent task of documenting endangered languages. In Phase II, the AGGREGATION Project will pursue two related sets of goals: (1) Expanding the coverage of the cross-linguistic resource and the resulting computational grammars and (2) creating interfaces to realize the potential of the grammars, the annotations they produce, and the intermediate outputs of our grammar creation system as analytical tools for field linguists. The overall system and its interfaces are general tools, meant to bring the power of computational processing to field linguists. In order to ensure their broad applicability, the tools will be developed using three languages from different language families and different parts of the world as case studies: Chintang (a Kiranti language of Nepal), Matsigenka (an Arawak language of Peru), and Abui (an Alor-Pantar language of Indonesia). This project is supported by NSF's Robust Intelligence Program in CISE.