A mereology-based general linearization model
for surface realization
Ciprian-Virgil Gerstenberger
Computational Linguistics
University of Saarland, Germany
gerstenb@coli.uni-sb.de
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a cross-
linguistically motivated architecture for
surface realization based on mereology,
i.e. on the part-whole distinction. First, we
present the main ideas that motivated the
model. Then we present a general mereo-
logical description of the natural language
utterance. The utterance is modeled in
terms of embedded Linear Order Parts with
two mutually exclusive relations holding
between them: the Part-Of relation and the
Linear Order relation. A General Lineariza-
tion Model based on these concepts consists
of a linearization module, an inflection
module, and a text polishing module. The
architecture we propose models surface re-
alization phenomena in terms of constraints
on grammatically valid configurations of
utterance “parts”. We illustate linearization
with our model by presenting walk-through
examples, and compare our model with
other approaches to linearization.
1 Introduction
In the time of multimedial, multilingual web-based
information systems, spoken dialogue systems play
an important function in presenting search results in
a compact, flexible way. This is a challenge for the
traditional Natural Language Generation (NLG) sys-
tems that have to provide spoken systems with flex-
ible, context-sensitive output.
Different NLG approaches propose language-
independent methods for determining word order
(e.g., (Nizar Habash et al., 2001), (Bohnet, 2004),
(Gerdes and Kahane, 2001)). However, basic ques-
tions such as (1) what are the primitive items for lin-
earization, (2) whether to linearize lemmata or al-
ready inflected words, (3) how to form complex lin-
ear order parts, (4) what are the subsequent steps of
linearization that lead to grammatically and ortho-
graphically correct strings, are left open. In this pa-
per, we propose a cross-linguistically motivated gen-
eral linearization model that approaches these basic
questions.
To emulate the flexibility of natural language with
respect to surface realization, the properties that ac-
count for this flexibility have to be properly anal-
ysed. To this end, we propose a linguistically in-
formed mereological utterance description (MUD).
This description is the guideline for the general lin-
earization model (GLM) we propose. We show that
this linearization model offers a solid ground for a
uniform treatment of various linguistic phenomena
related to linearization, inflection, phonological as-
similation, and orthography.
This paper is organized as follows: In section
2, we present four basic observations we consider
of major importance for language-independent sur-
face realization. In section 3, we propose a mereo-
logic description of the natural language utterance as
the fundament for a flexibile, language-independent,
general linearization model. Section 4 deals with
three essential questions for a general sentence re-
alization architecture: (1) What to linearize: sym-
bols for words (lemmata) or word forms (inflected
words)? (2) What are the primitive items for lin-
earization? (3) How to form complex linear order
parts? In section 5, we describe the general lin-
earization model, and briefly describe the inflection
and the text polishing submodules of the overall ar-
chitecture. We exemplify linearization with GLM
in section 6 and compare our model to similar ap-
proaches in section 7. We summarize our model in
section 8.
2 Observations
We make the following observations relevant to lan-
guage generation:
Observation 1 Speech is prior to writing both cul-
turally and historically (see (Greenberg, 1968)).
Designing and developing linguistically moti-
vated NLG systems involves a strict separation of
phonological and orthographic knowledge, as well
as a heavy use of phonological knowledge for a
proper orthografic surface realization (but not vice-
versa).
Observation 2 Generation and analysis are two
fundamentally different tasks.
The input for analysis is a single linearized string,
and the fundamental problem of analysis is the am-
biguity: to interpret the input correctly, the analysis
modules have to construct syntactic structure, and
to insert empty elements (traces, empty topological
fields, etc.) into that structure. The fundamental
problem of generation is the choice: it knows what
to say, but there are many ways how to say it. For
linearization, there is no need of empty elements nor
to output analysed structure such as NPs and VPs.
The result of surface realization is always a string.
Observation 3 The smallest linearizable entity in a
language is the phoneme.
Various types of speech errors reveal that, when
producing language, we do not necessarily linearize
whole constituents, or even words. Phoneme shifts
(e.g., mutlimodal), phoneme cluster shifts (e.g.,
flow snurries) or morpheme shifts (e.g., self-instruct
destruction) illustrate this fact.
Observation 4 The most general relation between
two entities α and β such that α is a substructure of
β is the part-of relation.
What is the relation between a phoneme and a syl-
lable containing it? And the relation between a syl-
lable and a morpheme containig it? It is evident that
a phoneme is part of the syllable containing it. This
also holds for a word and constituent containing that
word or for a constituent and a clause containig that
constituent. Yet, what is regarded as a constituent
depends on which constituency tests are used, and
the usage of traditional constituency tests is contro-
versial (see (Phillips, 1998) or (Miller, 1992)). In
contrast, there is no controversy about – and no need
to test – the fact that the phoneme /n/ is part of the
syllable /no/, if this syllable has been uttered. It
should be noted that the part-of concept is an old
philosophical concept and that regarding language
entities as part-of structures is not a novelty either
(see (Moravcsik, to appear)). An example of a lin-
guistic theory that employs the concept of part-of
for cross-linguistic analysis is Radical Construction
Grammar. (Croft, 2001, p. 203) says that “[. . . ] the
only syntactic structure in constructions is the part-
whole relation between the construction and its ele-
ments”.
3 Mereological utterance description
Taking into account observation 3 and 4, we present
a mereological utterance description (MUD). The
model we propose here is an extension of the part-
of relation to smaller linguistic items than words,
constituents or constructions (in the sense of (Croft,
2001)). First, we define the unit of mereologic de-
scription we propose and we illustrate it with exam-
ples. Then, we present relations and properties of
the mereological structures.
Definition 1 A Linear Order Part (LOP) is a lan-
guage item which is phonologically realized as a
contiguous part of a grammatically well-formed ut-
terance.
According to the definition above following lin-
guistic entities are LOPs: a phoneme (e.g., cluster),
a phoneme cluster – not necessarily a syllable – (e.g.,
cluster), a syllable – not necessarily a morpheme –
(e.g. cluster), a morpheme – not necessarily a free
morpheme – (e.g., incredible), a word (e.g., a book),
parts of adjacent words (e.g., a big red book), or
word groups (the rather boring book). Any con-
tiguous part of a grammatically well-formed utter-
ance can be a LOP, either (1) motivated linguisti-
cally – constituents such as noun phrases, adjectival
phrases, verb phrases, or partial constituents, (non-
empty) topological fields (as in Topological Field
Model (TFM) (Höhle, 1983)) that can consist of
more than one constituent, or embedded clauses,
matrix clauses, whole sentences, whole paragraphs,
etc. –, or (2) not motivated linguistically (e.g., the
nice book that Angela read is written by Merkel).
We restrict the use of MUD to LOPs that are linguis-
tically motivated 1 .
The following two relations hold between LOPs:
Definition 2 [Part-Of relation]
Let λ1 and λ2 be two different LOPs: λ1 v λ2 iff λ1
is proper part of λ2 . PO-relation is reflexive, anti-
symmetric, and transitive.
Definition 3 [Linear Order relation]
Let λ1 and λ2 be two different LOPs: λ1 ≺ λ2 iff
the occurence of λ1 precedes the occurence of λ2 in
the utterance. LO-relation is irreflexive, asymetric,
and transitive.
In addition, LO-relation and PO-relation are mutu-
ally exclusive, i.e., two different LOPs can either
PO-relate or LO-relate but not both.
Definition 4 [Exclusivity]
Let λ1 and λ2 be different LOPs, then:
1. if λ1 v λ2 , then λ1 6≺ λ2 and λ2 6≺ λ1
2. if λ1 ≺ λ2 , then λ1 6v λ2 and λ2 6v λ1
To illustrate the three definitions above let us con-
sider the LOP [the book on the table]:
λ1 ≺ λ2 : λ3 [λ1 [the book on the]λ1 λ2 [table]λ2 ]λ3
λ1 v λ3 : λ3 [λ1 [the book on the]λ1 λ2 [table]λ2 ]λ3
[the book on the] can not be part of [table] but it pre-
cedes it, whereas [the book on the] can not precede
[the book on the table] but is definitely part of it.
An important property of the parts of an utterance is
that they can not proper-overlap.
Definition 5 [Non-proper-overlapping]
Let λ1 , λ2 , and λ3 be different LOPs, and λ2 v λ1
and λ2 v λ3 . Then either λ1 v λ3 or λ3 v λ1 .
To illustrate this property let us consider the string
[the red apple]. From a mereologic perspective, one
can analyse this string
as λ1 [the red]λ1 λ2 [apple]λ2
λ
or as 1 [the]λ1 λ2 [red apple]λ2
but definitely not as λ1 [the λ2 [red]λ1 apple]λ2 .
Taking into account observation 1, MUD naturally
extends to written language.
1
It is obvious that MUD can cover all types of speech errors
but this is not part of our task
4 From analysis to generation
There are various ways to chunk an utterance into
parts, at various levels. But even if the partitions
that are not linguistically motivated are excluded
some basic questions relevant to linearization arise.
What is the most appropriate LOP level to work at
in linearization? Shall a general linearization mod-
ule work at phoneme/grapheme level?
4.1 What to linearize?
In order to answer the above questions, all cross-
lingual phenomena that are relevant to linearization
should be accounted for. It is impossible to deal with
all these phenomena, but we want to call attention to
this fact.
4.1.1 Inflected or non-inflected items?
For the design of a general surface realization ar-
chitecture, it is necessary to determine the modules,
their precise distribution of tasks, and the overall
workflow. For the linearization task, this means to
know whether to linearize lemmata, i.e., non-flected
words, or lexemes, i.e., word forms.
Different linguistic theories take different posi-
tions with respect to linearization: syntax comes be-
fore inflection morphology (e.g., Government and
Binding, Minimalist Program); syntax comes after
inflection morphology (e.g., LFG, HPSG).
To try to find an answer to this question let us
consider some example. In the Romanian this-
NP, the position of the demonstrative can be ei-
ther prenominal (acest om, this man) or postnom-
inal (omul acesta, this man) (see (Mallison, 1986,
p. 265), (Constantinescu-Dobridor, 2001, p. 123)).
The Romanian this-NP is always definite, but it
shows different marking patterns for definiteness,
depending on the relative position of the demostra-
tive to the noun. In prenominal position, neither the
demonstrative nor the noun is marked for definite-
ness (ex. 1), while in postnominal position, both the
demonstrative and the noun is marked for definite-
ness2 (ex. 5).
To obtain only the two grammatically correct vari-
ants of the Romanian this-NP (ex. 1 and 5) both the
morpho-syntactic specification and the relative po-
sition of demonstrative and noun is required. This
fact definitely speaks for linearization before inflec-
tional morphology. The conclusion is that theo-
2
Whether the demonstrative is really marked for definite-
ness is questionable, but fact is that it features a different form,
depending on its position to the noun.
retical frameworks such as HPSG or LFG might (13) Să-l faceţi!
not be able to generate all grammatically correct that it do-imp-pl
variants of a Romanian, without explicit coding of
linearization-relevant information in other process- (14) Faceţi-l!
ing modules that are not supposed to handle lin- do-imp-pl it
earization. (15) Sie will das Fenster aufmachen.
(1) acest om (5) omul acesta she wants the window off make
this man man-def this-def She wants to open the window.
(2) *acesta omul (6) *om acest (16) Sie macht das Fenster auf.
this-def man-def man this she makes the window off
(3) *acesta om (7) *omul acest She opens the window.
this-def man man-def this A Polish PN-marker in past can occur before (ex.
(4) *acest omul (8) *om acesta 10–11) or after the verb (ex. 9). A Romanian weak
this man-def man this-def
pronoun can occur before (ex. 12–13) or after the
4.1.2 Lexical or sublexical items? verb (ex. 14). Finally, a German separable verb par-
It is not always possible to tell whether an item is an ticle can occur before (ex. 15) or after the verb (ex.
affix, a clitic, or a word, as the vast literature on cli- 16). All these different items pass the linearization
tics reveals (see (Miller, 1992)). This is understand- test.
able, given the language as an ongoing process. As Taking into account the phenomena described
(Croft, 2001) put it: “[l]anguage is fundamentally above, we propose that the set of the primitive items
DYNAMIC . . . Synchronic language states are just for linearization should contain the following types
snapshots of a dynamic process emerging originally of entities: (1) sublexical items that pass the lin-
from language use in conversational interaction.” earization test at morpho-syntactic level such as Pol-
To illustrate sublexical phenomena let us consider ish PN-markers, Romanian weak pronouns and Ger-
the so-called floating affixes in Polish, a marker for man separable verb particles; (2) lexical items, pro-
person and number (PN-marker) in past. Prever- vided that there is agreement among linguists about
bally, it behaves like a clitic, attaching to various the definition of lexemes.
other words (ex. 10–11); postverbally, it behaves 4.2 How to form complex entities?
like a suffix, attaching only to the finite verb (ex.
9; for a detailed description, see (Kupść and Tseng, In this section, we show how to form complex LOPs,
2005), (Crysmann, 2006)). assuming the primitive LOPs described in the previ-
To find out the granularity of primitive lineariza- ous section. Given the well-known phenomena of
tion entities we propose the following test. discontinuous constituents such as partial fronting
and extraposition, it is obvious that forming com-
Linearization test Given two items α and β at plex LOPs does not necessarily correspond to form-
morpho-syntactic level in a specific language, if the ing traditional constituents.
language allows both for α ≺ β and β ≺ α then If a language allows complex LOPs to occur in
these items are linearization primitives. different positions, a general mechanism of form-
Let us illustrate the application of the linearization ing complex LOPs should take the following two as-
test to the following cases: Polish PN-marker, Ro- pects into account:
manian weak pronoun and German separable verb 1. whether two or more primitive LOPs permute
particle. always as a unit;
(9) Nie widzieliśmy tego. [We didn’t see this.]
2. whether two or more primitive LOPs permute
not see-pst-m-pl-1pl this sometimes as a unit, and if so, under which cir-
(10) Tegośmy nie widzieli. cumstances.
this-1pl not see-pst-m-pl We call the first Total Permutation Constraint
(11) Myśmy tego nie widzieli. (TPC) and the second Partial Permutation Con-
we-1pl this not see-pst-m-pl straint (PPC). If in a specific language two or more
(12) Să ı̂l faceţi! [Do it!]
primitive LOPs never permute as a unit, no complex
that it do-imp-pl LOP can be formed of them.
 As an illustration of the TPC, let us consider the Peter hat gestern ein Buch, das schön ist, gekauft
German article + noun combination in ex. 17–19. (Yesterday, Peter bought a nice book).
In German, the article and the noun permute as a
unit, independent of their occurence in a grammati- (20) Peter hat gestern ein Buch, das schön ist, gekauft.
cally correct utterance. Peter has yesterday a book that nice is bought
(17) Das Buch ist schön. (21) Peter hat ein Buch, das schön ist, gestern gekauft.
the book is nice Peter has a book that nice is yesterday bought
The book is nice.
(22) *Peter hat ein Buch gestern, das schön ist, gekauft.
(18) Schön ist das Buch.
Peter has a book yesterday that nice is bought
nice is the book
The book is nice. (23) Peter hat gestern ein Buch gekauft, das schön ist.
Peter has yesterday a book bought that nice is
(19) Ist das Buch schön?
is the book nice (24) Peter hat ein Buch gestern gekauft, das schön ist.
Is the book nice? Peter has a book yesterday bought that nice is
Now imagine an – allowedly strange – language
As long as both ein Buch and das schön ist oc-
in which the article of the direct object – if there is
cur in the middle field (the underlined part in the
one –, the subject – if there is one –, and the temporal
exmples above) they have to form a complex LOP
adverbial – if there is one – can permute freely but
that can be scrambled as a whole (ex. 20–22). How-
always as a unit: this has to be modeled in exactly
ever, if the relative clause is extraposed, the adverb
the same way as the German article + noun combi-
yesterday can occur between the noun and the rel-
nation above, despite the fact that they do not belong
ative clause (ex. 23–24). In the same vein, we
to the same constituent but, in fact, they are just parts
model linearization constraints stemming from dif-
of different constituents. Now it is clear that while
ferent description levels: morpho-syntactic, syntac-
contiguous constituents always meet TPC, TPC ap-
tic and macro-structural. We want to stress here too,
ply to all kind of primitive LOP combinations, not
that our model handles discontiguous constituents,
necessarily to those that are semantically related.
topological fields in Germanic languages but also
The strange language example above illustrates ex-
any kind of partial constraints in other languages in
plicitly this extremely important issue.
the same way, namely by means of PPC.
Please note that the fact that complex linear order
parts in our model are build solely based on TPC and 4.3 Where to linearize?
PPC, and not on traditional syntactic constituency,
Different approaches to linearization take different
is one of the crucial differences between the model
positions with respect to whether linearization is an
we propose and approaches that, at a first sight, are
absolute (1st , 2nd , 3rd , etc.) or a relative positioning
similar to it, such as (Bohnet, 2004) or (Gerdes and
process. Taking into accout the optionality of ele-
Kahane, 2001).
ment usage in language, absolute positioning leads
For a general linearization model, we want to
to the use of empty slots (see, for instance, the tra-
stress that TPC/PPC and adjacency are not the same,
ditional TFM). However, this contradicts our aim to
and that just adjacency as a linearization constraint
comply with observation 2. Therefore, we propose
is not an appropriate means of abstraction: TPC
to use relative positioning, expressed in terms of be-
and PPC impose adjacency automatically if there are
fore and after.
only two primitive LOPs to combine. Imagine for
instance the German das rote Buch (the red book):
5 General Linearization Model
these three primitive LOPs meet TPC, they always
permute as a unit, but, in this constellation, the ar- The General Linearization Model (GLM) we pro-
ticle is never adjacent to the noun. Moreover, just pose reflects the primitive structures of MUD, i.e.,
putting two or more LOPs together doesn’t say any- the primitive LOPs, as well as the relations between
thing about their position to each other, as is the case them: the PO-relation and the LO-relation, as de-
with scrambling in the middle field in German. scribed in section 3. The granularity of the input
To illustrate PPC let us consider German extra- symbols is dictated by the considerations in section
posed and non-extraposed relative clauses such as 4.1, how to build complex linearization structures
abides by the two constraints proposed in section
4.2, and how to position a linearization item to an-
other follows the ideas in section 4.3.
In this section, first, we present GLM and then
we sketch a possible surface architecture based on
GLM.
5.1 Linearization entities
Definition 6 A Symbolic Linear Order Part
(SLOP) is a symbolic representation of a language
item which has to be phonologically (or graphically)
realized as a contiguous part of a grammatically
well-formed utterance (or sentence).
Primitive SLOPs are symbols for linearization-
relevant items at morpho-syntactic level, i.e., (1)
content words, (2) function words and (3) sublex-
ical items that pass the linearization test. Addi-
tionally, each SLOP contains its morpho-syntactic
specification. For instance, for the German form
machte the specification is [MACHEN, type=verb,
vForm=fin, temp=imperf, pers=3, nr=sg]. The Roma-
nian weak pronoun forms ı̂l and -l require [WEAK -
PRON , type=wPron, pers=3, nr=sg, gender=n, case=acc].
The specification for the German article form dem
is [ART, type=def, nr=sg, gender=n, case=dat]. Finally,
the specification for the Polish PN-marker form śmy
is [PN - MARKER, pers=2, nr=pl].
5.2 Rules
Reflecting MUD, GLM features two type of rules:
(1) PO-relating rules (mereological rules) and (2)
LO-relating rules (linear rules).
5.2.1 Part-Of rules
Given the primitive SLOPs in an input structure,
the PO-rules constrain these SLOPs according to
the total and partial permutation constraints of the
given language. For German, such a rule forms
a complex SLOP from every subtree of the form
[noun-det→art], constraining the permutability of
a noun and its determiner (see ex. 17–19) or a noun
and its relative clause (see ex. 20–24).
5.2.2 Linear Order rules
The GLM features three types of LO-relating rules:
1. vertical: constraining the position of a node to-
wards its children nodes
For every subtree of the form [noun-det→art] the SLOP
for article precedes the SLOP for noun.
2. horizontal: constraining the position of a node
towards its sibling nodes
For every subtree of the form [noun1 -det→art]
& [noun1 -mod→adj] the SLOP for article precedes the
SLOP for adjective.
3. diagonal: constraining the position of a node
towards nodes that are neither siblings nor in
immediate dominance relation in the depen-
dency tree
This rules constrain the position of a node or a subtree
which does not form a complex SLOP with its mother
SLOP, as is the case for extraposed relative clauses as in
ex. 23–24.
5.3 Input structure
The input structure for the linearization is a depen-
dency tree whose nodes are SLOPs, i.e., symbols
for the individual LOPs to be realized, plus their
morpho-syntactic descriptions. This means that the
module responsible for building input structures has
to know about primitive linearization items. As with
other dependency models (see (Gerdes and Kahane,
2001), (Bohnet, 2004)), we assume that there is
no explicit linearization information stored with the
tree.
5.4 Surface realization architecture
Based on GLM, we propose the following surface
realization architecture:
1. a linearization module that takes as input de-
pendency trees as described above and builds
all valid variants according to the PO- and LO-
rules of a given linearization grammar. The
output of the linearization step is a set of pro-
jective SLOP-trees.
2. an inflection module that takes as input the
output of linearization and, based on the
morpho-syntactic specification and, if needed,
on adjacency information (see section 4.1), ob-
tains the appropriate surface forms of the in-
dividual SLOPs plus their phonological rep-
resentation. The output are the same pro-
jective SLOP-trees enriched with morpho-
phonological representations.
 3. a text polishing module that takes the output
of the previous step and, based on the surface
form and the context of each SLOP, it performs
phonological assimilation, orthographic editing
and punctuation. The output of this module is
the final surface realization of the utterance.

6 Examples
This section exemplify the interaction of the pro-
posed architecture, using some phenomena de-
scribed in the previous sections.
Figure 1: Forming complex SLOPs
Polish Let us consider the Polish PN-marker de-
scribed in ex. 9–10. For the given input, the PO-
rules form complex SLOPs as in figure 1. The LO-
rules for Polish order simple and complex SLOPs
according to grammar restrictions as in figure2. Af-
ter the inflection morphology step, the final string is
processed accordingly: the first word form is cap-
italized; the PN-marker is joined to the preceding
word, if this action does not violate the phonological
constraints3 imposed by the language (see (Kupść Figure 2: Final results
and Tseng, 2005)) – in which case, the current real-
ization variant is rejected –; then, punctuation rules obligatory weak pronoun postclitization to the verb
are applied. in postverbal position, only the variant Faceţi-l! is
generated.
Romanian Given as input SLOPs for realizing a 7 Related work
Romanian this-NP, a linearization module impose
One of the most important concepts of GLM is
no restriction on the positions of demonstrative and
the use of mereological structure as “generalized
noun: both variant are possible (see ex. 1 and 5).
constituents”. Dissociating linear order from con-
Based on the morpho-syntactic specification and
stituency is not new (see (Reape, 1994), (Pollard
the relative position, the value for definiteness is
et al., 1994), (Goetz and Penn, 1997)), but most
assigned accordingly: for the constellation [DEM,
of these models are concerned mainly with analy-
def=minus]≺ [OM, def=minus], the inflection morphol-
sis, and as for generation, many questions are left
ogy generates acest om, while for [OM, def=plus]≺
open. However, even models dedicated mostly to
[DEM, def=plus], omul acesta.
generation employ vague concepts of what are the
Unlike (Minnen et al., 2000), the surface architec-
linearization primitives, how exactly to form com-
ture we propose allows for different variants at the
plex linearization units, or what to do after the lin-
level of morphology. For Romanian weak pronouns
earization step to obtain the correct surface realiza-
(see ex. 12–14), the result of linearization and inflec-
tion. An example of such a model is (Bohnet, 2004),
tion is să ı̂l faceţi and faceţi ı̂l. Based on the optional
which is very similar to our model with respect to
weak pronoun postclitization to the subjunction să in
dependency trees as input stuctures and to how to
preverbal position, the text polishing module gener-
express linearization rules. However, there are basic
ates both Să ı̂l faceţi! and Să-l faceţi!; based on the
differences with respect to both primitive and com-
3
The proposed architecture allows for a modular application plex linearization items. While our model proposes
of phonological rules that can model even such phenomena like mereological-based units that abide by TPC/PPC,
yer vocalisation (see (Crysmann, 2006) for details). Given the
constellation mógł+m, phonological rules at this level come up (Bohnet, 2004)’s “[p]recedence units roughly rep-
to the correct verb form mogłem. resent constituent structures.”. Moreover, (Bohnet,
2004) uses only two kinds of LO-relating rules (ver-
tical and horizontal), failing possibly to properly
constrain extraposed relative clauses in German (see
ex. 23–24). As for the realization steps after lin-
earization, (Bohnet, 2004) appears not to be con-
cerned about at all.
8 Conclusions
In this paper, we presented the following three mod-
els: a mereological utterance description (MUD), a
general linearization model (GLM) that draws upon
MUD, and a surface realization architecture that
draws upon GLM. The overall goal of this under-
taking is a flexible, language-independent model for
surface realization. We asked basic questions with
respect to linearization – such as what are primitive
linearization items, how to form complex items –,
and tried find answers to them by taking into account
relevant, cross-linguistic phenomena. We shown the
individual parts of GLM and how a surface realiza-
tion architecture based on this model realizes some
of the phenomena presented before.
In future work we intend to implement the theo-
retical ideas presented in this paper, modeling vari-
ous linguistic phenomena. Our research topic is to
find out, classify and implement in a modular man-
ner different linearization constraints (grammar, in-
formation structure, phonology, etc.), as well as to
associate prosody to each linearization variant. The
final goal of the model is to enable an appropriate
ranking of linearization variants with respect to the
specific communicative situation.
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