ASSIGNMENT ON: CATAGORICAL GRAMMAR

M.S APPLIED LINGUISTICS

STUDENTS NAME:

FARWA SAIF

FATIMA SOOFI

URFA ZIA

OSAMA ADNAN

SUBMITTED TO:

DR. SUMMAIRA SARFARAZ

DEPARTMENT NAME

ENGLISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS

NATIONAL UNIVERSITYOF COMPUTER AND EMERGING SCIENCES

LAHORE, PAKISTAN.
 CATAGORICAL GRAMMAR

Categorial grammar is a term used for a family of formalisms in natural language syntax

motivated by the principle of compositionality and organized according to the view that

syntactic constituents should generally combine as functions or according to a function-

argument relationship.

A grammar in which constituents (categories) are combined according to their function-

argument relations. CG is a lexicalized theory of grammar.

Categorial Grammar (CG) is a term which covers a number of related formalisms that

have been proposed for the syntax and semantics of natural

languages and logical and mathematical languages.

The term “categorial grammar” refers to a variety of approaches to syntax and semantics

in which expressions are categorized by recursively defined types and in which

grammatical structure is the projection of the properties of the lexical types of words. In

categorial grammar there are two traditions:

1. logical tradition

 grew out of the work of Joachim Lambek

 logical approach employs methods from mathematical logic and situates

categorial grammars in the context of sub structural logic.

 the logical tradition interprets the history of categorial grammar

2. combinatory tradition

 work of Mark Steedman

 combinatory approach emphasizes practical applicability to natural language

processing and situates categorial grammars within extended rewriting systems.

Background

The basic concept of categorial grammar was originated from the work of

Kazimierz Ajdukiewice (1935) and Yehoshua Bar HIillel (1953).Further in 1958

it was introduced by Lambek in syntactic calculus form. One formalism which

has received considerable attention in recent years is Steedman and

Szabolcsi's combinatory categorial grammar.

Chomsky proposal

Chomskean apparatus of transformations, replacing his CFPS base grammar with

a pure CF categorial grammar. This proposal was influentially advanced by Lyons

in (1968) .Lyons's proposal for a categorially based transformational grammar is

in fact only peripherally concerned with syntax. Chomsky's theory to small

numbers of general-purpose movement transformations, perhaps confine to a

single most general rule "move a", and the realisation that all such "movements",

even those involving Wh-elements and their traces, could be regarded as base-

generated.

Context Free Grammar

Categorial grammars of this form (having only function application rules) are

equivalent in generative capacity to context-free grammars and are thus often

considered inadequate for theories of natural language syntax. Unlike CFGs,

categorial grammars are lexicalized, meaning that only a small number of (mostly
 language-independent rules are employed, and all other syntactic phenomena

derive from the lexical entries of specific words.

A variety of changes to categorial grammar have been proposed to improve

syntactic coverage. Some of the most common ones are listed below.

1. Features and subcategories (most common way to do this is by tagging

them with features, such as person, gender, number, and tense.)

2. Function composition (Function composition is important in categorial

accounts of conjunction and extraction, especially as they relate to

phenomena like right node raising. The introduction of function

composition into a categorial grammar)

3. Conjunction (Conjunction can generally be applied to nonstandard

constituents resulting from type raising or function composition)

4. Discontinuity (The grammar is extended to handle linguistic phenomena

such as discontinuous idioms, gapping and extraction.

Pure Categorical Grammar:

In a categorial grammar lexical items, are associated with a type or "category”

potential for combination with other constituents to yield compound constituents.

The category is either one of a small number of "basic" categories,

such as NP, or a "f~~nctor" category.

Gilbert sees George Gilbert sees George ------- --------- ------ ------- --------- ------ np

(np\s)/np np NP (S\NP)/NP NP -------------- > > np\s S\NP --------------- < --------------- <

s S a. Lambek
 b. Com binatory

Examples

Harry cooked and Mary ate some apples -------- --------- ---- -------- --------- -----------

NP (S\NP)/NP conj NP (S\NP)/NP NP -------- >T - - - - - - - - >T

S/(S\NP) S/(S\NP)

----------------- >B ------------------ >B

.............................. >

Agreement is ignored

cook' apples' harry'

Explanation:

(Here again we use a convention of "left associativity", so that the above applicative

expression is equivalent to (cook' apples') harry’

The classes of rule - composition, type-raising, and substitution constitute the entire

inventory of combinatory rule-types that this version of combinatory CG adds to pure

categorial grammar

Principles:

THE PRINCIPLE OF DIRECTIONAL CONSISTENCY:

All syntactic combinatory rules must be consistent with the directionality of the principal

function.

THE PRINCIPLE OF DIRECTIONAL INHERITANCE:

If the category that results from the application of a combinatory rule is a function

category, then the slash defining directionality for a given argument.

Conclusion:

Theories of categorical grammar have been applied with some success to a wide range of

syntactic phenomena of the kinds touched on above in a number of languages. Much

criticism of theories in this area has been confounded with misconceptions, three of

which are sufficiently widespread to require comment. Firstly, it is sometimes argued on

the basis of the permutation completeness of van Benthem's calculus that categorial

grammars overgeneralize. A criticism has arisen from the mistaken belief that phenomena

that depend upon c-command, such as binding and control, cannot be captured in

grammars with such flexible surface structures. Lastly error concerning these grammars

is that they are disproportionately difficult to parse. One may therefore speculate that the

concept-formation mechanism has taken a combinatory form because it has evolved in a

piecemeal fashion, out of elements that were selected for more restricted functions, and

that this property is inherited by the linguistic system.

Refrences:

Steedman, M., & Baldridge, J. (2011). Combinatory categorial grammar. Non-

Transformational Syntax: Formal and explicit models of grammar, 181-224.

Oehrle, R. T., Bach, E., & Wheeler, D. (Eds.). (2012). Categorial grammars and natural

language structures (Vol. 32). Springer Science & Business Media.

Steedman, M. (1993). Categorial grammar. Lingua, 90(3), 221-258.

Morrill, G. (2011). Categorial grammar: Logical syntax, semantics, and processing.

Oxford University Press.

Buszkowski, W., & Penn, G. (1990). Categorial grammars determined from linguistic

data by unification. Studia Logica, 49(4), 431-454.