This book surveys the important concept of unification as it relates to linguistic theory and, in particular, to Functional Unification Grammar, Definite-Clause Grammars, Lexical-Function Grammar, Generalized Phrase Struture Grammar, and Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar.
"Shieber's notes on unification-based grammar formalisms are extremely helpful in understanding both the theoretical aspects and the computational properties of these systems. The notes include careful and correct definitions, as well as well-chosen examples of actual grammars, and a discussion of the relationships of computational systems and linguistic theories which use ideas from unification. 'An Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar' was invaluable in my own work on the formal theory of feature structures."--William C. Rounds, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Stuart M. Shieber is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information and a computer scientist at SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center. His research on unification-based grammar formalisms bridges logic programming and linguistic theory.
Stanford:CSLI Publications. Lecture Notes no. 4. 105p. 1986
ISBN: 0-937073-00-8 Paper
ISBN: 0-937073-01-6 Cloth
LINGUISTICS COMPUTER SCIENCE