The Role of Grammar Formalisms

Grammar formalisms are metalanguages intended to describe natural languages: the set of sentences that make up the language, their structural properties, and how these relate to their meanings.

• Why do we need such metalanguages?
  • To provide a precise tool for the description of natural languages
  • To delimit the class of possible natural languages
  • To provide a computer interpretable characterisation of natural languages

 
• Criteria of Evaluation
  for Grammar Formalisms
• Aside: John McCarthy
• Some Particular Design Choices
  for a Class of Formalisms