Generalized phrase structure grammar

Generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG) is a framework for describing the syntax and semantics of natural languages. It is a type of constraint-based phrase structure grammar. Constraint based grammars are based around defining certain syntactic processes as ungrammatical for a given language and assuming everything not thus dismissed is grammatical within that language. Phrase structure grammars base their framework on constituency relationships, seeing the words in a sentence as ranked, with some words dominating the others. For example, in the sentence "The dog runs", "runs" is seen as dominating "dog" since it is the main focus of the sentence. This view stands in contrast to dependency grammars, which base their assumed structure on the relationship between a single word in a sentence (the sentence head) and its dependents.[1]

  1. ^ Gazdar, Gerald; Ewan H. Klein; Geoffrey K. Pullum; Ivan A. Sag (1985). Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell, and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-34455-6.