Interaction Grammars

TL;DR

Interaction Grammar (IG) is a formalism that models natural language syntax through polarity-based resource sensitivity, using a chemical reaction analogy for syntactic composition within a constraint-based, model-theoretic framework.

Contribution

This paper introduces Interaction Grammar, a novel formalism that employs polarity and a chemical reaction analogy to represent syntactic composition in a constraint-based model.

Findings

IG models resource sensitivity in syntax

Parsing is viewed as building saturated, minimal tree descriptions

Formalism provides a new perspective on syntactic composition

Abstract

Interaction Grammar (IG) is a grammatical formalism based on the notion of polarity. Polarities express the resource sensitivity of natural languages by modelling the distinction between saturated and unsaturated syntactic structures. Syntactic composition is represented as a chemical reaction guided by the saturation of polarities. It is expressed in a model-theoretic framework where grammars are constraint systems using the notion of tree description and parsing appears as a process of building tree description models satisfying criteria of saturation and minimality.