Resources for Multilingual Text Generation in Three Slavic Languages

John A. Bateman, Elke Teich, Geert-Jan M. Kruijff, Ivana Kruijff-Korbayová, Serge Sharoff, Hana Skoumalová

Abstract: The paper discusses the methods followed to re-use a large-scale, broad-coverage English grammar for constructing similar scale grammars for Bulgarian, Czech and Russian for the fast prototyping of a multilingual generation system. We present (1) the theoretical and methodological basis for resource sharing across languages, (2) the use of a corpus-based contrastive register analysis, in particular, contrastive analysis of mood and agency. Because the study concerns reuse of the grammar of a language that is typologically quite different from the languages treated, the issues addressed in this paper appear relevant to a wider range of researchers in need of large-scale grammars for less-researched languages.