#### #### Ph.D. Thesis Announcement
#### #### =
#### #### A LOGICAL APPROACH TO COMPUTATIONAL CORPUS LINGUISTICS
#### #### =
#### #### Torbj=F6rn Lager
=
This is to announce the availability of my Ph.D. thesis: "A Logical
Approach to Computational Corpus Linguistics". I have prepared a WWW =
page dedicated to the approach described in the thesis, from which
machine readable versions of the thesis may be downloaded, and hard
copies ordered. The relevant URL is:
http://www.ling.gu.se/~lager/taglog.html
You may also send mail directly to me: lager@ling.gu.se
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this thesis is to build a *corpus theory development
environment* -- to discuss its design, use, and implementation. The
proposed system is based on a logical approach to computational corpus
linguistics where sentences of logic are used to express statements
about texts and logical inference is used to manipulate these sentences
in order to analyse the texts.
The thesis demonstrates the remarkable ease with which the
functionalities needed in a corpus system can be implemented when based
upon adequate means of representing, querying, and reasoning. The
proposed system implements hand coding, searching, concordancing,
parsing, counting, tabling, collocating, automatic part-of-speech
tagging, lemmatizing, excerpting, interpreting, treebanking,
explanation, and various kinds of learning.
By linking all this functionality into a common representational
framework characterised by high expressive power, declarativity, and
explicit reasoning strategies, and by embedding the whole concept in a
particular philosophical and methodological context, including an
ontology of text, an analysis of the notion of theory, an explication
of the notion of truth, and other foundational issues, we arrive at an
interactive system which is multi-functional and general, yet simple,
consistent, and highly usable.
Apart from being interesting from a practical point of view, the
development of such a system raises intriguing philosophical and
methodological questions: What is a corpus text? What is a corpus
theory? What does it mean to develop a corpus theory? What does it
mean for a corpus theory to be true about a corpus text? What is the
link between the truth of such a theory and its usefulness for natural
language processing purposes? These and related questions are discussed
in the thesis.
The system exists in a prototype implementation and the thesis
contains numerous examples from this implementation in action.
KEY WORDS: Corpus linguistics, Corpus tools, Grammar, Grammar development
---------------------------------**-------------------------------------*--=
----
Torbjoern Lager E-mail: lager@ling.gu.se
Department of Linguistics Phone: +46 31 7731175
University of Gothenburg Fax: +46 31 7734853
Renstroemsparken
412 98 Gothenburg
Sweden
**-*-----*-*------------------*--------------------------------------------=
----