A meta-grammatical framework for dependency grammar

We propose a meta-grammatical frame-work for dependency grammar, accommo-dating any number of dimensions and re-stricting their licensed models through the application of parametric principles. We rst instantiate this framework to obtain the version of Topological Dependency Grammar (TDG) proposed by (Duchier and Debusmann, 2001). We then describe an extended instantiation which adds sup-port for semantic dependencies (thus also providing an account of control and rais-ing constructions) and meaning assembly. Topological Dependency Grammar (TDG) (Duchier and Debusmann, 2001) explains linearization phe-nomena through the interaction of two structures, similar to (Gerdes and Kahane, 2001): a non-ordered tree of syntactic dependencies and an or-dered and projective tree of topological dependen-cies. In this paper, we propose a generalized meta-grammatical framework, accommodating any num-ber of dimensions (beyond syntax and topology) and restricting their licensed models through the applica-tion of parametric principles. First we show how this framework can be instantiated to obtain the earlier version of TDG. We then describe an extended in-stantiation which adds support for semantic depen-dencies (thus also providing an account of control and raising constructions) and meaning assembly. Figure 1 sketches briey how the extended TDG is articulated around multiple-dimensions. 1 ID/LP TDG In this section, we explain the basics of TDG. We regard TDG as a general grammar framework that needs to be instantiated to yield a particular gram-mar formalism. One instance is ID/LP TDG, as pro-posed in (Duchier and Debusmann, 2001).1 ID/LP TDG is a lexicalized formulation of depen-dency grammar (Tesniere, 1959) that combines a non-projective account of syntax with an account of linear precedence inspired by the classical model of topological elds (Höhle, 1986). An analysis consists of two mutually constraining trees: a non-ordered tree of syntactic dependencies (ID tree) and an ordered and projective tree of topological depen-dencies (LP tree). We introduce the ID/LP TDG framework using the following German example sentence