Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Parsing IsiZulu Text Using Grammatical Framework

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Special Sessions I, 20th International Conference (DCAI 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 741))

  • 401 Accesses

Abstract

While Grammatical Framework (GF) resource grammars are primarily intended as linguistic software libraries, they can also be employed to enable syntax parsing via the GF runtime system. The isiZulu resource grammar (ZRG) in conjunction with the GF runtime system constitutes the first openly available parser for isiZulu. A key feature of the implementation of the ZRG is to model aspects of morphology as equivalent to syntax. In the absence of a baseline, we evaluate the parser at the token level against a morphological analyser, before characterising its phrase level analysis in order to establish a baseline for parsing of isiZulu text.

This work has been funded by the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (https://sadilar.org/).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    A detailed discussion of this example with reference to the ZulMorph tagset is beyond the scope of this paper. A full description of the tagset is available at https://portal.sadilar.org/FiniteState/demo/zulmorph/doc.html#tagset.

References

  1. Angelov, K.: Orthography engineering in grammatical framework. In: Proceedings of the Grammar Engineering Across Frameworks (GEAF) 2015 Workshop, pp. 33–40 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Angelov, K., Ljunglöf, P.: Fast statistical parsing with parallel multiple context-free grammars. In: Proceedings of the 14th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 368–376 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bamutura, D., Ljunglöf, P., Nebende, P.: Towards computational resource grammars for runyankore and rukiga. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pp. 2846–2854 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bosch, S.: Computational morphology systems for Zulu-a comparison. Nord. J. Afr. Stud. 29(3), 28–28 (2020). https://doi.org/10.53228/njas.v29i3.548

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Gaustad, T., Puttkammer, M.J.: Linguistically annotated dataset for four official South African languages with a conjunctive orthography: IsiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, and Siswati. Data Brief 41, 107994 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2022.107994

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Griesel, M., Bosch, S., Mojapelo, M.L.: Thinking globally, acting locally-progress in the African wordnet project. In: Proceedings of the 10th Global Wordnet Conference, pp. 191–196 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Kolachina, P., Ranta, A.: From abstract syntax to universal dependencies. Linguist. Issues Lang. Technol. 13 (2016). https://doi.org/10.33011/lilt.v13i.1391

  8. Kotzé, G., Wolff, F.: Experiments with syllable-based English-Zulu alignment. In: 9th SaLTMiL Workshop on “Free/open-Source Language Resources for the Machine Translation of Less-Resourced Languages” (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Moeng, T., Reay, S., Daniels, A., Buys, J.: Canonical and surface morphological segmentation for Nguni languages. In: Jembere, E., Gerber, A.J., Viriri, S., Pillay, A. (eds.) SACAIR 2021. CCIS, vol. 1551, pp. 125–139. Springer, Cham (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95070-5_9

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Pannach, F., Meyer, F., Jembere, E., Dlamini, S.Z.: NLAPOST2021 1st shared task on part-of-speech tagging for Nguni languages. In: Proceedings of the International Conference of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Poulos, G., Msimang, C.T.: A linguistic analysis of Zulu. Via Afrika Ltd. (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Pretorius, L., Bosch, S.: Enabling computer interaction in the indigenous languages of South Africa: the central role of computational morphology. Interactions 10, 56–63 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Pretorius, L., Bosch, S.E.: Containing overgeneration in Zulu computational morphology. South. Afr. Linguist. Appl. Lang. Stud. 26(2), 209–216 (2008). https://doi.org/10.2989/SALALS.2008.26.2.3.567

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Pretorius, L., Marais, L., Berg, A.: A GF miniature resource grammar for Tswana: modelling the proper verb. Lang. Resour. Eval. 51(1), 159–189 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10579-016-9341-z

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Ranta, A.: The GF resource grammar library. Linguist. Issues Lang. Technol. 2 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ranta, A.: Grammatical Framework: Programming with Multilingual Grammars. CSLI, Stanford, California (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ranta, A., Angelov, K., Gruzitis, N., Kolachina, P.: Abstract syntax as interlingua: scaling up the grammatical framework from controlled languages to robust pipelines. Comput. Linguist. 46(2), 425–486 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1162/coli_a_00378

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Ranta, A., Kolachina, P.: From universal dependencies to abstract syntax. In: Proceedings of the NoDaLiDa 2017 Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2017), pp. 107–116 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Voice Computing, NextGen Enterprises and Institutions, CSIR, Pretoria, South Africa

    Laurette Marais

  2. Division of Computer Science, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Laurette Pretorius

Authors
  1. Laurette Marais
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Laurette Pretorius
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Laurette Marais .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. High Performance Computing Center, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Rashid Mehmood

  2. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Victor Alves

  3. ISEP/GECAD, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Port, Porto, Portugal

    Isabel Praça

  4. Kielce University of Technology, Kielce, Poland

    Jarosław Wikarek

  5. BISITE, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Javier Parra-Domínguez

  6. Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Roussanka Loukanova

  7. Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

    Ignacio de Miguel

  8. INESC-TEC and GECAD/ISEP, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

    Tiago Pinto

  9. Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

    Ricardo Nunes

  10. University of Calabria, Arcavacata, Rende CS, Cosenza, Italy

    Michela Ricca

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Marais, L., Pretorius, L. (2023). Parsing IsiZulu Text Using Grammatical Framework. In: Mehmood, R., et al. Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Special Sessions I, 20th International Conference. DCAI 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 741. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38318-2_17

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation