University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science
CSC 485/2501F—Computational Linguistics, Fall 2018
Assignment 2
Due date: 12:10, Thursday 1 November 2018, in lecture.
Late assignments will not be accepted without a valid medical certificate or other documen-
tation of an emergency.
This assignment is worth either 25% (CSC 2501) or 33% (CSC 485) of your final grade.
• Fill out both sides of the assignment cover sheet, and staple together all answer sheets
(in order) with the cover sheet (sparse side up) on the front. (Don’t turn in a copy of
this handout.)
• Please type your reports in no less than 12pt font; diagrams and tree structures may be
drawn with software or neatly by hand.
• What you turn in must be your own work. You may not work with anyone else on any
of the problems in this assignment. If you need assistance, contact the instructor or TA
for the assignment.
• Any clarifications to the problems will be posted on the course bulletin board. You will
be responsible for taking into account in your solutions any information that is posted
there, or discussed in class, so you should check the page regularly between now and
the due date.
1. Using features in grammars [10 marks]
Grammar 1 handles NPs of various different types. Grammar 2 is much simpler and easier
to read, but doesn’t appropriately constrain the NPs generated.
Grammar 1
Rules:
S→ NPsg VPsg
S→ NPpl VPpl
VPsg→ Vsg NP
VPpl→ Vpl NP
PP→ P NP
NPsg→ NPRP
NPsg→ Det Nsg
NPsg→ Det Nsg PP
NPpl→ Det Npl
NPpl→ Det Npl PP
NPpl→ Npl
NPpl→ Npl PP
NP→ NPsg
NP→ NPpl
Lexicon:
Fido: NPRP
biscuits: Npl
feed: Vpl
feeds: Vsg
the: Det
dog: Nsg
puppies: Npl
with: P
Grammar 2
Rules:
S→ NP VP
VP→ V NP
PP→ P NP
NP→ N
NP→ Det N
NP→ Det N PP
NP→ N PP
Lexicon:
Fido: NPRP
biscuits: N
feed: V
feeds: V
the: Det
dog: N
puppies: N
with: P
A. (2 marks) Code up Grammar 1 in TRALE (using types for non-terminals), and show
the parse tree for the following sentence according to that grammar:
Fido feeds the dog with biscuits.
Submit the grammar as the file onea.pl and the parse tree as onea.gralej. Your
grammar should declare one type for each non-terminal listed in this grammar.
B. (7 marks) Code up Grammar 2 in TRALE, and augment it with features so as to restrict
its language to that of Grammar 1. You must use features. Do not add extra non-
terminals.
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Submit this grammar as the file oneb.pl. Again, your grammar should declare one
type for each non-terminal in this grammar, but you will need additional types to rep-
resent the values of the features that you introduce.
C. (1 mark) Show the parse tree for the sentence in part A above, this time using your
augmented Grammar 2.
Submit this output as the file onec.gralej.
The TRALE system can be run with this command:
/h/u2/csc485h/fall/pub/trale/trale -fsg
(which you are welcome to alias). Do not copy the TRALE or SICStus Prolog systems
to your directory; run these in situ in your shell. You may find that, in order to use the
graphical user interface that comes with TRALE, you must remove the very small default
virtual memory limit that comes with accounts on teach.cs. In tcsh, you do this with
the command:
limit vmemoryuse unlimited
Use File > Export > Gralej to pretty-print trees for your assignment submission.
Hint: The mnemonics sg and pl stand for singular and plural, the numbers for singular and
plural.
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2. Verb complements and gap features [20 marks]
Gap features enable us to assign the right grammatical functions to the arguments of a verb,
which in turn guarantees that they will be assigned the right thematic roles. For example,
in the grammar for the passive construction that we saw in class, we can associate the NP
subject with the object position through a “gap” feature, so that, in the semantics, the subject
NP can be interpreted as the Theme of the verb.
There are many more situations in which NPs are interpreted as if they occurred in positions
in which they do not overtly occur than the passive. Consider the following sentences:
i. The student tried to sleep.
ii. The student appeared to sleep.
iii. The student promised the teacher to sleep.
iv. The student expected the teacher to sleep.
For example, in (i), the student is the Agent of tried, as we would presume because it is the
subject of tried; but interestingly in (i), the student is also the Agent of sleep, even though it
does not appear to be the subject of sleep.
In answering the three questions on the next page, assume the following:
• Try and expect have two thematic roles assignable: Agent and Theme. Promise has
three: Agent, Theme and Beneficiary. Sleep has one: Experiencer; and appear has
one: Theme.
• Every subject and object must be linked to at least one thematic role. (This is the
mapping of thematic roles to grammatical functions that we saw in class.)
• Every grammatical function (e.g., subject, object) can be linked with at most one the-
matic role from the same verb. This does not mean that the NPs that bear those gram-
matical functions can only bear one thematic role, because NPs can bear more than
one grammatical function.
• A complement clause (i.e., an embedded verb phrase or sentence) can be assigned the
Theme thematic role from its verb. In other words, NPs are not the only constituents
that can be assigned thematic roles.
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A. (5 marks) For each of the sentences (ii)-(iv) above, for each thematic role assignable
by either verb in the sentence, state which constituent receives that role. Submit your
answer as the file twoa.txt.
Hint: The treatment of the NP the teacher is different in the last two sentences.
B. (14 marks) Devise a phrase structure grammar augmented with features for the above
sentences. Be sure to give the necessary lexical entries for the four verbs, tried ,
appeared, promised, and expected, as well as sleep. Submit this grammar as the file
twob.pl.
Use only features that are necessary to ensure the appropriate interpretation of NPs
with respect to semantic roles.
To make the class’s grammars a bit more uniform, we have given you a head start with
the file teach.cs:/h/u2/csc485h/fall/pub/twosub.pl. You will have
to add types and features to this. Do not remove types, and do not alter the subtyping
or feature declarations that already appear there.
C. (1 mark) Parse sentence (ii) above (The student appeared to sleep) in TRALE using
your grammar, and submit the resulting parse tree. There should be only one tree
generated. This output should be submitted as the file twoc.gralej.
Implementation details
In order for the grader to be able to semi-automatically test your work, each file must have
the exact name and format specified in the following subsections.
Some overall specifications for your files:
• The first line of each file must be a comment (with %) with your name, login ID, and
student ID.
• Each grammar rule, lexical entry, or sentence must be separated by one or more blank
lines in its appropriate file.
• You should organize and use comments to remark upon how your grammar and lexicon
function, just as you would programming language code, to make it easily understand-
able.
• Unlike the standard convention for specifying context-free grammars, the TRALE sys-
tem requires lexical entries to provide the grammatical description on the right-hand
side and the word on the left-hand side, e.g., john —> np. Do not capitalize
non-terminals or proper names like John, as capitalized tokens are interpreted as vari-
ables by Prolog. TRALE also does not allow the use of the pipe (|) for disjunction on
either side. Use a separate lexical entry for each word that you wish to assign a feature
structure to.
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• In your grammar source code files, the grammar rules should all come first, followed
by the lexical entries, in alphabetical order of the words.
Test sentences
Name of the file: sentences.pl
An example:
% Your name, login ID and student ID go here.
test_sent([nadia,won,an,elephant]).
test_sent([i,could,have,demanded,a,rutabaga]).
test_sent([autopoiesis,always,reminded,her,of],fails).
Note: Use this file to provide extra sentences not mentioned in this assignment handout that
you may have tried during development. The sentences must be delimited by commas, and
no words should be capitalized. If a test sentence is supposed to fail, give test_sent an
extra argument that tells us this.
0.0.1 Output parse trees
All your output parse trees should be directed to files with the extension .gralej. All of
these files should have your name, ID, and student number as the first line. Do not add any
lines to the output you generate except commented lines (again with %).
0.1 What to submit
0.1.1 On paper
Staple together (no paper clips or folded corners, please) the following items in the following
order:
• The project cover sheet (attached to the back of this handout).
• A written report describing the design of your grammars and lexica, and your ap-
proach (how you met the requirements stated above). Don’t forget also to discuss the
limitations of your grammars.
• A written report on your testing strategy—in particular, why you chose the sentences
that you used for testing the grammar and lexicon. This should be no more than one
page.
• Printouts of the .gralej files that you generate.
• Printouts of your grammar source code.
Note: You do not need to submit other code that you write, e.g., code for running your test
sentences, calling the pretty-printer, etc.
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0.1.2 Electronically
In addition to your paper submission, you must submit your grammars, parse trees and
test sentences electronically. Submit all required files using the submit command on
teach.cs:
% submit -c
where
are the n files you are submitting. Make sure every file you turn in contains a comment at
the top that gives your name, your login ID on teach.cs, and your student ID number.
Grading scheme
We will test your grammars on the examples in this handout as well as on some held-out test
sentences (i.e., sentences that you haven’t seen).
Both grammars in a part B will be marked as to style and commenting (1/7), simplicity of
your feature geometry and type system (2/7), in addition to correctness (4/7). The grammar
in 1A will be marked as to style (1 mark) and simplicity (1 mark).
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CSC 2501 / 485, Fall 2018: Assignment 2
Family name: First name:
Staple to assignment this side up
CSC 2501 / 485, Fall 2018: Assignment 2
Family name: First name:
Student #: Date:
I declare that this assignment, both my paper and electronic submissions, is my own work,
and is in accordance with the University of Toronto Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters
and the Code of Student Conduct.
Signature:
Grade:
1. / 10
2. / 20
TOTAL / 30