NSM-DALIA

NSM-DALIA is a natural language parser and generator, with modular grammars based on dependency grammar. It is written mainly to target that subset of a natural language known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, but is extensible.

NSM-DALIA is written in PROLOG, and has been developed with the SWI-PROLOG system.

NSM-DALIA, as SWI-PROLOG itself, is released under the GNU General Public License (see the GNU web site for details).

NSM-DALIA version 0.9

Version 0.9 improvements over the previous version:

Tok Pisin module available, and translation facilities implemented. Now NSM-DALIA can translate between English and Tok Pisin NSMs;
A better English module;
PROLOG "wild" code of version 0.8 converted into modules, and basic documentation of exported predicates added;
Literate programming style for grammars: the grammar writer can add basic documentation to the rules; this documentation is collected and saved in a grammar booklet in .rtf format. The Tok Pisin grammar in the release (directory "lang_doc") is an example; it has been almost entirely generated automatically from the source code (I have only added the bibliography). You can download a PDF version of the Tok Pisin NSM Grammar .

This new release is not yet version 1.0. The main problem remains with grammars:

writing a grammar in the current format is still too much like writing a PROLOG program;
grammars are too unrestricted, and look as independent of any linguistic theory.

A radically improved format is under experiment for version 1.0. New gramamrs are still dependency-based, but an injection of generative grammar (mainly Cinque's studies on the cartography of sentence structure and a merge-like operations effected by dependency rules.

Things which should come with next releases:

The new grammar format, which should make grammar-writing more a linguistic task than a computer-science one;
More grammar modules;
A module for parsing lexical explanations (some parts are already in version 0.9);
Anthologies of NSM texts, which will be made available in a language-particular as soon as the grammar module for that language is written. This, I hope, will be useful for endangered languages.

Download and install NSM-DALIA

To run NSM-DALIA, you will first need to install the NSM-PROLOG interpreter, which has been ported to many platforms. At the SWI-PROLOG homepage, you will out find how to download and install SWI-PROLOG for your operating system.

Then, after you have downloaded NSM-DALIA (version 0.9) and unzipped the file, you will run NSM-DALIA by entering the directory NSM-DALIA-0.9 and double-clicking the file dalia_cline.pl (LINUX users shall launch "pl dalia_cline.pl" from a console).

By double clicking on the file dalia_cline_doc.pl, a documentation server will be started.

Previous versions

Version 0.8: NSM-DALIA-0.8