<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi all,</div><div><br></div><div>I've been working on a little tool for assisting me with exploring the implementation of syntactic phenomena across DELPH-IN grammars. Here's a little overview of 'Typediff' as I think there's some chance that others might find a use for it...</div>
<div><br></div><div>The general idea is that by feeding the tool pairs of sentences that are as similar to each other as possible but differ in that one exhibits a particular phenomenon and one does not (ie minimal pairs), and then doing a diff of the types used to process them, you can quickly drill down to components of the grammar potentially associated with the implementation of the phenomenon. </div>
<div><br></div><div>The tool extracts the types used in the diff by reading off every type label found in the full AVM of the parse. The advantage of this approach is that you can very quickly see differences between items that could be hidden deep down in the depths of their AVMs that might not otherwise normally see the light of day. (Doing the diff over supertypes also goes some way towards solving the problem of how far up the hierarchy to look).</div>
<div><br></div><div>There's a live installation running over <a href="http://hum.csse.unimelb.edu.au/typediff/">here</a>. Here are also some examples of diffs from the ERG intended to pinpoint <a href="http://hum.csse.unimelb.edu.au/typediff/#count=10&mode=difference&Agrammar=terg&A=The%20dog%20was%20bitten%20by%20the%20man.&Bgrammar=terg&B=The%20man%20bit%20the%20dog.">the passive</a>, <a href="http://hum.csse.unimelb.edu.au/typediff/#count=10&mode=difference&Agrammar=terg&A=We%20relied%20on%20and%20hired%20consultants.&Bgrammar=terg&B=We%20relied%20on%20consultants%20and%20we%20hired%20consultants.">right node raising</a> and <a href="http://hum.csse.unimelb.edu.au/typediff/#count=10&mode=difference&Agrammar=terg&A=I%20like%20the%20dog%20that%20ran.&Bgrammar=terg&B=I%20like%20the%20dog.%7C%7C%7CThe%20dog%20ran.">subject relative clauses</a>. (I've hooked up all grammars that I know of with ACE support -- if I've missed one, let me know). There's also a page for Typediff on the <a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/TypediffTop">wiki</a>.</div>
<div><br></div><div>This tool could also potentially be useful for grammar documentation and exploring unfamiliar grammars. One potentially useful feature is that you can also diff input parsed by different versions of the grammar.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If you are able to make use of it for any of these applications (or otherwise) I would greatly appreciate hearing about how it was useful, and what kind of input you were feeding it. Also, if there are any missing features that you think might greatly improve its utility, drop me a line and we might be able to come to some kind of an arrangement...</div>
<div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Ned</div><div><br></div>-- <br><a href="http://nedned.net" target="_blank">nedned.net</a>
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