The implementation of a computational grammar of French using the Grammar Development Environment Louisette Emirkanian Lyne Da Sylva Lorne H. Bouchard Universit6 du Qu6bec g Montrdal UQAM and Universit6 du Qu6bec 'h Montr6al emirk~nian.louisette@uqam.ca Universit6 de Montr6al bouchard.lorneJl~uqam.ca dasylva@iro.mnontreal.ca Abstract The design and implementation of a large-coverage computational grammar of French is described. This grammar is compared to a comprehensive compu- tational grammar of English which was implemented using the same computer workbench. Although many similari- ties may be observed in the two gram- mars, there are important structural dif ferences which can be traced back to fea- tures specific to the F~'ench language, no- tably agreement and cliticization. 1 Introduction We present a large-coverage computational gram- mar of French (CGF) 1 and discuss some imple- mentation aspects of' this grammar by comparing it to the Alvey Natural Language Tools Grmm mar (ANLT Grammar) (Grover et al., 1.993) which wins also implemented using the Grammar De- velopment Environment (GDE) (Bogm'aev et al., 1988). The grammar of French was implemented as part of a larger project, the goals of which are the development and application of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG) (Gazdar et al., 1985) in general and the design and implemen- tation of a comprehensive computational gram- mar for French in particular. In this paper, we highlight the many similari- ties between the two grammars but especially dif- ferences due to phenomena particular to French. This leads to a description of the major structural differences between tile two grammars. We shall not justify the reasons for our choice of GPSG but will simply point out that GPSG is a formal theory which is unification-based and hence well-suited for computational linguistics. The Grammar Development Environment is a computer workbench for the development and evaluation of computational grammars of natural 1This resem'ch is flmded by SSHRCC (40-93-0607) and by FCAR (95ERl198) language which are described in a style close to that of GPSG. It embodies a modified version of GPSC which is easier to implement than its the- oretical counterpart. The GDE was developed as part of the Alvey Natural Language Tools project in the UK. 2 Comparison of the two grammars The ANLT grammar was used as a model and ini- tial source of inspiration for the design and imple- mentation of the grammar of l~'ench, despite obvi- ous differences between tile two languages. Both grammm-s strive to account for the same t)roper- ties of natural language although they differ on points of detail, the differences being essentially structural. 2.1 Similarities X-bar theory is used in (Gazdar et al., 1985) to characterize constituent structm'e. In our gram- mar, as in the ANLT grammar, X-bar schemata are respected in general, although there are differ- ences of detail. There is no specifier in the verb phrase (VP), thus the V2 immediately dominates the V; complex specifiers in noun phrases (NP) and adjectival and adverbial phrases (AdjP and AdvP) are given special treatment: there are X2 level specifiers of X2 constituents, as tbr example in: (I) N2 -4 R2[POSS +], H2 the man's black hat N2 --+ N2[TYPR coll], H2 une foule de ces 6tudiants (a crowd of those students) Furthermore, some constituents have a specifier at level X1 even if there is a specifier at level X2 : (2) N2 -4 Spec, H2 tous les enfants, all the children N2 -4 Det, HI les enfants, the children Adjectival, adverbial and prepositional phrases are treated in a similar fashion in both grammars. 1024