Robots who read grammars

Robots who read grammars
Jayden L. Macklin-Cordes, Nathaniel L. Blackbourne, Thomas J. Bott, Jacqueline Cook, T. Mark Ellison, Jordan Hollis, Edith E. Kirlew, Genevieve C. Richards, Sanle Zhao, Erich R. Round

Poster presented at CoEDL Fest 2017, Alexandra Park Conference Centre, Alexandra Headlands, QLD, Australia. Hosted by the University of Queensland. 6 February 2017.

Abstract
Linguistic typology has yet to undergo a computational revolution like that seen in other scientific endeavours. Nevertheless, we could soon be able to query the entire store of published knowledge on human languages when we do our research. To do so, knowledge must be represented in a machine-readable format. Here, we introduce a prototype ‘Grammar Harvester’, a set of processes for creating richly annotated, machine-readable versions of existing grammatical descriptions, starting from a scanned PDF. Further, we introduce ‘Finder’ and ‘Analyser’ Robots, scripts which automatically identify and compile information from harvested grammars using novel and existing ontologies of linguistic concepts.

Author bio
Jayden Macklin-Cordes is a PhD candidate at the Ancient Language Lab, University of Queensland. He is the lead investigator on CoEDL Transdisciplinary and Innovation Grant, 'A "data well" prototype for Sahul phonologies'. Erich Round (Ancient Language Lab director, UQ) and Mark Ellison (ANU) are collaborators on the same grant. Working hard on the project are Summer Research Scholars Sanle Zhao, Edith Kirlew, Thomas Bott and Nathaniel Blackbourne (all UQ), with further generous assistance from research assistants Genevieve Richards, Jordan Hollis, and Jacqueline Cook (all UQ).