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Course Material for Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) for German

This course develops a modell of the German language. The lecture provides an introduction into the following main concepts:

  • representation of valence information and semantic information,
  • grammar rules, and
  • lexical rules.
These devices will be explained by discussing the following phenomena:
  • Part one of the course:
    • clause structure,
    • relatively free constituent order,
    • non-local dependencies (fronting in declarative sentences and relative clauses),
  • Part two of the course:
    • agreement,
    • case assignment,
    • the verbal complex,
    • raising and control constructions,
    • passive,
    • particle verbs, and
    • morphology (inflection and derivation).

The analyses will be coached in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). HPSG uses typed feature structures for modelling linguistic objects. Phonological, morphological and syntactitc structures are described using the same description inventory. Semantic representations are build together with morphological and syntactic structures.

HPSG uses multiple inheritance and type hierarchies to express generalizations about words and phrases.

HPSG was used in the largest AI project in Germany (VerbMobil) for the analysis of German, English and Japanese utterances.

  • Slides
    • Part I (Version of: June 16, 2022)
      • Slides (in pdf format for viewing, 7.8M)
      • Handouts (in pdf format for printing (4up), 8.7M)
    • Part II (Version of: October 19, 2016)
      • Slides (in pdf format for viewing, 25M)
      • Handouts (in pdf-Format for printing (4up), 9.1M)
    • The LaTeX Code is availible on request.

Examples of Examinations