{"id":1532,"date":"2019-04-07T08:06:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T02:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/?p=1532"},"modified":"2019-10-13T08:59:30","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T03:29:30","slug":"book-review-grammar-as-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/07\/book-review-grammar-as-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Grammar as Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Title: Grammar as Science<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Author: Richard K. Larson<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Publisher: The MIT Press<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

Year: 2010<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

I love studying English Grammar. That is one of the reasons I enjoy working in the area of NLP<\/strong><\/em>. Machine Learning<\/strong><\/em> techniques apart, I firmly believe that a good understanding of the conventional approaches to modelling syntax and semantics is essential for achieving success in this field.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a collection of many good books on syntax and semantics, but I do not miss the opportunity to buy a book if it comes across as interesting. The book I am going to review today, \u201cGrammar as Science\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0 is one such book. It is not a recent publication; it was published in the year 2010, but only recently did I come across a reference to it and immediately bought the book.<\/p>\n

This is easily one of the best introductory books on syntactic theory<\/strong><\/em>, and it is inspired (similar to many other books on the subject) by Noam Chomsky<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u2019s work. What is different about this book compared to others is that this book discusses syntax with primary focus on scientific theorising<\/strong><\/em> and scientific thought<\/strong><\/em>. As the author says in the preface \u201c \u2026 it is an introduction to syntax as an exercise in scientific theory construction\u201d<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The book has a total of 28<\/strong> Units (chapters) grouped into 7<\/strong> major Parts (sections). Part 1 lays the ground work by introducing Linguistics<\/strong><\/em> and Syntax<\/strong><\/em>. Part 2 describes the idea of Phrase Structure Rules<\/strong><\/em> and shows how to define Grammars<\/strong><\/em> and test them. Chapter 4 in this part gives practical guidelines on how to systematically formulate a grammar (manually) from sentence examples and shows why judging well-formedness<\/strong><\/em> is not that simple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The book\u2019s core idea of scientific theorizing is introduced and elaborated in Part 3. This, in my opinion, is the most important section in the book. It shows how we can compare theories and evaluate them. As part of this discussion, the author explains the idea of \u201ctree\u201d<\/strong><\/em> structure, constituencies<\/strong><\/em> and word\/phrase categories<\/strong><\/em>. Constituency tests involving conjunction<\/strong><\/em>, ellipsis<\/strong><\/em> and dislocation<\/strong><\/em> are clearly explained. These concepts help us in comparing and revising grammars.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part 4, consisting of just two chapters, goes into the details of how to construct arguments<\/strong><\/em> in support of a specific grammatical structure that we may arrive at in the course of language analysis. Part 5 expands on this theme and goes into the process of \u201cexplaining\u201d<\/strong><\/em> a chosen syntactic structure. It is in this section that the author introduces the \u201clexicon\u201d<\/strong><\/em> and how it can associate multiple \u201cfeatures\u201d<\/strong><\/em> with words, thus enabling us to come up with an acceptable structure for a given sentence. Other important aspects covered in this part are \u201cadjuncts\u201d<\/strong><\/em> and \u201ccomplements\u201d<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part 6 builds upon the previous section and discusses \u201cComplement sentences\u201d<\/strong><\/em> in much more detail. I found the explanation regarding hidden-subject analysis<\/strong><\/em> quite interesting. There is also a whole chapter devoted to the structure of NP<\/strong><\/em>. Towards the end of this part, the author introduces \u201cX-Bar\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a> theory. I recommend this nice video<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0if you want to learn more about this theory.<\/p>\n

Part 7, the last section in the book, delves into the more advanced topic of \u201cwh-movement\u201d<\/strong><\/em> and associated constraints. \u201cGaps\u201d,<\/strong><\/em> usually associated with movement, are beautifully explained. Two entire chapters in this section are devoted to discussing the different constraints on movement. wh-movement<\/strong> <\/em>is a complex topic and if you want some additional material, you can watch this video<\/strong><\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The topics covered in the book may be regarded by many beginners as somewhat abstract and complex. But the author deserves praise for adopting a unique presentation style using an excellent graphic layout. Illustrations are remarkable and are very down-to-earth. This approach renders the concepts easy to grasp and paves the way for a pleasurable reading experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This book on classical syntactic theory might look outdated in the current scenario, where a lot of focus is on ML<\/strong><\/em>-based NLP<\/strong><\/em>. So, this is not the book for you if you are looking for advanced contemporary topics on NLP. Also, this is not the book for you if you are interested in getting into the nitty-gritty details of English grammar. For that I strongly recommend the following two books:<\/p>\n

1. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, Longman, 1985.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

2. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, Cambridge University Press, 2002.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

However, If you are just getting started in Computational Linguistics<\/strong><\/em>, this book would be a great addition to your reading list.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The book\u2019s website<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0refers to a companion software called \u201cSyntactica\u201d<\/strong><\/em>, a Java application that facilitates exploration of syntactic theory as described in the book.\u00a0 <\/span>I did not have the time to play with it, but might do so in the future.<\/p>\n

Overall, a very well written book!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Have a great weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Title: Grammar as Science Author: Richard K. Larson Publisher: The MIT Press Year: 2010 I love studying English Grammar. That is one of the reasons I enjoy working in the area of NLP. Machine Learning techniques apart, I firmly believe that a good understanding of the conventional approaches to modelling syntax and semantics is essential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,107],"tags":[205,203,204],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-natural-language-processing","tag-computational-linguistics","tag-english-grammar","tag-syntactic-theory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9OLnF-oI","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2832,"url":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/12\/definite-clause-grammars-in-lisp-part-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":1532,"position":0},"title":"Definite Clause Grammars in Lisp – Part 4","author":"admin","date":"June 12, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"In a series of articles\u00a0written earlier, I had shown how it is possible to model Definite Clause Grammars (DCG) in LispWorks Lisp (Enterprise Edition). We use defgrammar\u00a0in Common Prolog (available as part of KnowledgeWorks package) to define our grammar rules. Here is a toy English grammar represented using defgrammar: This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LISP"","block_context":{"text":"LISP","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/category\/lisp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"DCG Using Defgrammar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/defgrammar-version-300x177.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/defgrammar-version-300x177.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/defgrammar-version-300x177.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":548,"url":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/23\/definite-clause-grammars-in-lisp-part-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":1532,"position":1},"title":"Definite Clause Grammars in Lisp – Part 3","author":"admin","date":"June 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In today's post, let us see how we can enhance the grammar representation discussed so far to include both Number constraint and Parse Tree. Fortunately, this turns out to be quite straightforward. Just as we do in Prolog, we need to include additional parameters, as needed, to each grammar rule.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LISP"","block_context":{"text":"LISP","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/category\/lisp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"POS Functions","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/POS-Function.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/POS-Function.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/POS-Function.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":541,"url":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/04\/definite-clause-grammars-in-lisp-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1532,"position":2},"title":"Definite Clause Grammars in Lisp – Part 2","author":"admin","date":"June 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In the last post, I showed how we can implement DCGs in LispWorks using the KnowledgeWorks package. The grammar discussed in that post did not take into account subject\/predicate number agreement. This is one of the basic constraints in English grammar. Today I will show how easy it is to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LISP"","block_context":{"text":"LISP","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/category\/lisp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Prolog Grammar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Prolog-Grammar.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":617,"url":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2017\/09\/13\/reuse-of-grammars-through-inheritance\/","url_meta":{"origin":1532,"position":3},"title":"Reuse of Grammars Through Inheritance","author":"admin","date":"September 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"We are familiar with the advantages of class inheritance in object-oriented languages such as C++, C#, Java, and Python. The ability to reuse functionality via inheritance allows us to express our software design optimally, without having to write redundant code. iLangGen encourages the reuse of grammars by supporting Grammar Inheritance,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LISP"","block_context":{"text":"LISP","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/category\/lisp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Simple Grammar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image1.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image1.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/image1.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2415,"url":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/23\/the-structure-of-wh-questions\/","url_meta":{"origin":1532,"position":4},"title":"The Structure of WH-Questions","author":"admin","date":"May 23, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"WH-Questions are questions that begin with the following words: - Who (\u201cWho came here yesterday?\u201d) - What (\u201cWhat is the goal of this project?\u201d) - When (\u201cWhen can I visit my parents?\u201d) - Where (\u201cWhere did he go?\u201d) - Why (\u201cWhy is everyone running away?\u201d) - Which (\u201cWhich is the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Natural Language Processing"","block_context":{"text":"Natural Language Processing","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/category\/natural-language-processing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"WH-Questions Structure","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/WH-structure-300x238.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1792,"url":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/23\/using-augmented-transition-networks-atn-for-information-extraction\/","url_meta":{"origin":1532,"position":5},"title":"Using Augmented Transition Networks (ATN) for Information Extraction","author":"admin","date":"November 23, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"After Wood\u2019s paper [1], Augmented Transition Networks\u00a0(ATN) became popular in the 1970s, for parsing text. An ATN is a generalized transition network with two major enhancements: Support for recursive transitions, including jumping to other ATNs Performing arbitrary actions when edges are traversed Remembering state through the use of registers See\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LISP"","block_context":{"text":"LISP","link":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/category\/lisp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"ATN for Modality","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/modality.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/modality.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rangakrish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/modality.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rangakrish.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}