Language Technologies Institute
11-712: Self-Paced Laboratory

Algorithms for NLP:
GenKit Generation Module

Objective: Generation Kit is Lisp-based software that lets you compile unification grammars for natural language generation. When a grammar is compiled, a function called GENERATOR is produced; this function takes as input a full f-structure for a sentence, and returns an output string as output. In this assignment, you will complete the following tasks:
  • Write functions INFLECT-NOUN and INFLECT-VERB, which performs simple morphological inflection;

  • Write a routine called CREATE-PRONOUN to produce English pronouns from NUMBER and PERSON features;

  • Extend a given grammar to cover a set of f-structure/output pairs;

  • Use the TOPIC feature to vary the surface appearance of prepositional phrases.
Background
Material:		 Generation Kit and Transformation Kit Version 3.2: User's Manual, Masaru Tomita and Eric Nyberg, CMU-CMT-MEMO, October 1988.

Copies of this material will be available in the LTI Lab (CyH 277).

  1. Read the background material to familiarize yourself with the GenKit grammar formalism, especially the syntax of the grammar rules, and the particulars of calling the COMPGEN function to compile a grammar.

  2. If you have any questions after reading the background materials, seek guidance from the instructor.

  3. Follow the step-by-step instructions to complete your program and data files for the module.

  4. Answer this question in a file called genkit-questions.txt:

  5. Hand in your files (genkit-questions.txt, genfns.lisp and gen.gra) by copying them to the directory corresponding to your userid under:

    /afs/cs/project/cmt-55/lti/Lab/Modules/NLP-712/handin/

    Also include a file called test-output.txt, containing a transcript of your code running on the given test data (see the instructions file for more details).

  6. Notify the instructor that your module is ready for evaluation. Please be sure to check that you have completed all the parts, and that you have created the 3 files mentioned above, with the precise names given, before handing in your work.

27-Nov-96 by ehn@cs.cmu.edu