Computational construction grammar based on formal ontologies

Abstract

This work describes a formalization of construction grammar - a grammar formalism that considers the linguistic discipline of semantics not as a separate part of a language’s grammar but as a major part of it, equally important as other linguistic disciplines as for instance morphology or tense - by means of formal ontologies. The result of this undertaking is a powerful ontological model which is enriched with a cognitively motivated grammar layer to be used in natural language applications. The method is well documented in order to make the ideas and analyses reusable for instance for extending the framework with additional (domain) knowledge or even for writing new grammars.