1 Introduction

This document describes a parser for Topological Dependency Grammar (TDG), a grammar formalism described in various publications. TDG grammars can be written in a concrete grammar specification language which we introduce in chapter 2. The parser can be parametrized in various ways. We explain these parameters in chapter 3. The parser can be augmented with so-called plugins. Plugins are additional constraints to restrict the number of admissible analyses. We show how to add plugins in chapter 4. In addition to the parser itself, we have created a graphical user interface (GUI) to facilitate grammar development. The GUI allows to easily change parser parameters, switch between different grammar files, administrate example files and it provides a comprehensive set of facilities to display TDG analysis structures. We describe the GUI in chapter 5. The parser is implemented in a completely modular fashion. In chapter 6, we demonstrate how to utilize the parser without the GUI. Chapter 7 explains the extra files included in this package, viz. a LaTeX-style file to easily include TDG dependency tree depictions in LaTeX-documents and an emacs mode for grammar files. Finally, chapter 8 contains the history of this package.

1.1 Requirements

The TDG parser requires Mozart-Oz version 1.2.3 or higher. It further requires Denys Duchier's packages Ozmake and Select which can be found in MOGUL.

1.2 Installation

We distribute the TDG environment in the form of an ozmake package TDG.pkg. After downloading the TDG.pkg package, you can install it using ozmake: ozmake --install --package=TDG.pkg Alternatively, you may extract the sources into subdirectory TDG as follows: ozmake --extract --package=TDG.pkg --dir=TDG and then enter subdirectory TDG and invoke ozmake to just build the parser and its GUI in that directory: ozmake

The GUI is invoked by starting the TDG executable application. When installing the package, this application is placed in ~/.oz/bin where ~ stands for your home directory. Thus for greater convenience you should add ~/.oz/bin to your search path if this is not the case already.

How to make use of the parser without the GUI is explained in chapter 6.