Building a Constraint Grammar Parser for Plains Cree Verbs and Arguments

Abstract

This paper discusses the development and application of a Constraint Grammar parser for the Plains Cree language. The focus of this parser is the identification of relationships between verbs and arguments. The rich morphology and non-configurational syntax of Plains Cree make it an excellent candidate for the application of a Constraint Grammar parser, which is comprised of sets of constraints with two aims: 1) the disambiguation of ambiguous word forms, and 2) the mapping of syntactic relationships between word forms on the basis of morphological features and sentential context. Syntactic modelling of verb and argument relationships in Plains Cree is demonstrated to be a straightforward process, though various semantic and pragmatic features should improve the current parser considerably. When applied to even a relatively small corpus of Plains Cree, the Constraint Grammar parser allows for the identification of common word order patterns and for relationships between word order and information structure to become apparent.

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