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ERIC Number: ED231335
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1983-Feb
Pages: 80
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Nigel: A Systemic Grammar for Text Generation.
Mann, William C.; Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M.
This three-paper report describes Nigel, a large, programmed grammar of English which has been created in the framework of systemic linguistics begun by Halliday, and which, in addition to specifying functions and structures of English, has a novel semantic stratum which specifies the situations for use of each grammatical feature. The non-technical overview provided by the first paper emphasizes the ways in which Nigel has augmented various precedents in the systemic framework and indicates the current state of development. The second paper presents an extended example of how Nigel works, showing the coordination of syntactic and semantic parts through a demonstration in which actors play the role of the text generation program's major components, and the generation consists of the interaction of these components to produce a single sentence. The third paper describes the relationships between the framework implemented in Nigel and its systemic precedents, reporting on work in systemic grammar and semantics carried out by Mann, Halliday, and Matthiessen. The discussion focuses on the grammar and semantic framework and machinery, and how the grammar design relates to the text generation task. The first and third papers rely on the second for examples. (LMM)
Publication Type: Information Analyses; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: University of Southern California, Marina del Rey. Information Sciences Inst.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A