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Language Processing and Grammars: The role of functionally oriented computational models
Edited by Brian Nolan and Carlos Periñán-Pascual
[Studies in Language Companion Series 150] 2014
► pp. 79–104

Three-place predicates in RRG

A computational approach

| Aalborg University, Denmark

This book chapter presents a computational linguistics analysis of Role and Reference Grammar [RRG] (cf. Van Valin 2005). RRG, formulated as a pseudo-code program is not executable on a random access machine since the linking algorithm cannot account for variable undergoer linking in English three-place predicates. Consequently RRG is not computationally adequate. Therefore a new approach to RRG is developed using Nolan’s (2011) constructional schemas; the RRG semantics-to-syntax linking algorithm is revised, using the lexicon, information structure and constructional schemas to account for variable undergoer linking. A revised approach to the mental lexicon based on Gottschalk (2010) is developed, accounting for three-place predicates. In this approach macroroles are epiphenomenal and replaced by thematic relations to develop a computable account to RRG.

Published online: 1 April 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.150.04got
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