Finite-State Tokenization for a Deep Wolof LFG Grammar

Authors

  • Cheikh M. Bamba Dione University of Bergen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15845/bells.v8i1.1340

Abstract

This paper presents a finite-state transducer (FST) for tokenizing and normalizing natural texts that are input to a large-scale LFG grammar for Wolof. In the early stage of grammar development, a language-independent tokenizer was used to split the input stream into a unique sequence of tokens. is simple transducer took into account general character classes, without using any language-specific information. However, at a later stage of grammar development, uncovered and non-trivial tokenization issues arose, including issues related to multi-word expressions (MWEs), clitics and text normalization. As a consequence, the tokenizer was extended by integrating FST components. is extension was crucial for scaling the hand-written grammar to free text and for enhancing the performance of the parser. 

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Published

2017-11-23

How to Cite

Dione, Cheikh M. Bamba. 2017. “Finite-State Tokenization for a Deep Wolof LFG Grammar”. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies 8 (1). https://doi.org/10.15845/bells.v8i1.1340.