This chapter explores the computational implementation and applications of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). We discuss computational work which provides evidence that the RRG approach to grammar has a beneficial role to play in natural language processing (NLP) and delivers a credible and realistic linguistic model to underpin NLP applications. The computability of the model has been tested in diverse software applications. We characterize these and explain how RRG is used to underpin the linguistic component in the architecture of a number of software systems and applications. We conclude with a discussion of the contribution that RRG can provide to NLP. We discuss how the RRG model is translated into software, and some of the challenges involved. The chapter is a testimonial to how the RRG model of language can be successfully implemented in software.

This grammatical sketch explores sentence structure in Cheyenne/Tsêhésenêstsestôtse (Plains Algonquian, USA). We first describe the principal morphosyntactic features of Cheyenne and offer a brief account of grammatical phenomena that benefit from a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) analysis: basic clause types, verb valence and transitivity, the marking of core arguments, argument-adjuncts and adjuncts, and the linking algorithm. This analysis shows that there is no evidence for the postulation of grammatical relations, save for a pragmatically influenced privileged syntactic argument, and supports the hierarchical scope order of operators postulated by RRG. We then illustrate the fundamental role of pragmatics in argument coding, macrorole assignment, and word order by examining the relationship of information structure with the reference-tracking system of obviation and the direct/inverse system. These systems work jointly with the Person and Semantic Function Hierarchies. Despite word order variability, it is possible to integrate information structure into clause structure and explore the intricate mechanism that accommodates semantic information into syntactic structure.

This chapter discusses the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) treatment of adpositional assignment and introduces a new typology of adpositional phrase types, which arises from the combination of three binary features: [±argument], which corresponds to the semantic status of the participant introduced; [±core], which indicates whether this is a core argument or a peripheral adjunct; [±predicative], which manifests the predicative or non-predicative function of the adposition. The combinations of the three features provide the basis for a principled classification of adpositional phrases, which captures the distinct functions adpositions can have in different clauses.

This chapter offers an in-depth treatment of clause linkage and complex sentences in RRG. First, it discusses and exemplifies each nexus–juncture type, adducing evidence from a wide range of languages. Then, it introduces the notion of syntactic and semantic cohesiveness in clause linkage and makes relevant generalizations and predictions.

The RRG approach to information structure (IS) was laid out by Bentley (Chapter 11), and the linking between syntax and semantics was explicated by Van Valin (Chapter 1), Watters (Chapter 6), Guerrero (Chapter 14) and Paris (Chapter 15). These discussions did not emphasize the role of IS in linking, and it is to this topic that we turn in this chapter. We begin by presenting the representation of IS in the layered structure of the clause, and then we show how context can be represented using a version of Discourse Representation Theory and the different focus types derived from these representations. The next section illustrates the importance of IS for the analysis of grammatical phenomena, and this is followed by an analysis of conjunction reduction, which presented problems for an RRG analysis in purely syntactic terms. Finally, the interaction of IS and the linking algorithm will be explored, showing that IS interacts with it in important ways.

The goal of this chapter is to examine the rules that relate syntactic and semantic representations to each other in adverbial (adjoined) clauses. The following types of adverbial clause relations are discussed, using evidence from English, Spanish, Yaqui and other languages: concessive, conditional, reason, temporal, purpose, manner and means. The chapter sheds light on the complexities of adverbial relations between clauses and how such complexities can be captured in Role and Reference Grammar.

This chapter provides a grammatical overview of Avatime, a Niger-Congo language spoken in the south-east of Ghana. The first part surveys lexical categories (parts of speech and major Aktionsart classes of predicates), syntactic structure (clause structure, grammatical operators, nominal structure, and adpositional structure), and focus structure, while the second part is devoted to describing and illustrating the rich variety of serial verb constructions in Avatime, identifying three types of juncture–nexus (nuclear cosubordination, core coordination, and core cosubordination), and investigating how the correspondences of these juncture–nexus relations and their semantic functions fit into the Interclausal Relations Hierarchy.

One of the major concerns of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) has always been the development of a theory of semantic composition for both state and activity predicates. Over the last thirty years, there have been a variety of proposals aimed at the formulation of a semantic representation system that accounts for the interface between syntax and semantics. Proposals to enrich the RRG semantic representation system involve notations such as the use of internal variables, lexical functions and qualia structure, among others, in an effort to link syntax to conceptual or semantic meaning. Nevertheless, another solution could lie in a more ontologically oriented model of semantic representation that provides a conceptual framework for the formalization of meaning construction. This chapter outlines and describes a semantic representation system in the form of conceptual logical structures (CLSs), based on the FunGramKB ontology.

This chapter discusses adverbs in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). It consists of two parts: the first part provides an overview of the account of adverbs in RRG with illustrations from English and shows that they occur in the periphery of the nucleus, core or clause. The second part focuses on ideophonic (or mimetic) adverbs in Japanese and a few other languages as a further illustration of the RRG account of adverbs and its typological scope, and argues that ideophonic adverbs modify either the nucleus or core in Japanese, while they also occur as a nuclear-internal modifier in a Totonac-Tepehua language.

This chapter discusses two main aspects of the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) conception of the architecture of grammar: the view that grammatical relations are construction-specific, rather than being global categories of a language and being found in every language, and the function of grammatical relations in referent tracking, which was a major insight in the development (and naming) of the framework. These two aspects of RRG syntax have significantly influenced linguistic theory beyond the RRG framework.

This chapter describes the basic syntax of the Amele (Papuan) language from a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) perspective. Typologically, Amele has head-last syntax and is head-marking. Nominative-accusative agreement is suffixed to the verb stem and up to four arguments can be marked on the verb. There are only two major lexical categories, nouns and verbs, with very little overlap between these categories. Alternative undergoer selection may be made for ditransitive verbs. There is no passive construction in the language and the only choice for privileged syntactic argument (PSA) is [S, AT]. Focus may be expressed morphologically and by incorporation of modifier elements into the verb word. The language-specific topics featured are serial verb constructions and switch-reference (SR). SR applies to clauses in both coordinate and (some) embedded constructions. It is judged to be a local syntactic device for monitoring the referentiality of PSA arguments between adjacent clauses as to whether they have identical or non-identical reference.

This chapter reviews the existing Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) work on diachronic syntax and morphosyntax and shows how the tools of language description developed by RRG can also be used to account for several aspects of language change. Drawing evidence from developments which have occurred in a wide range of languages, it is argued that RRG allows for a more fine-grained analysis of diachronic processes than theoretically neutral approaches, that it answers fundamental questions about the nature and causes of syntactic change, and that it is not a mere tool of linguistic description, but a theory that makes falsifiable empirical predictions.