Real-Time Generation from

Abstract:  We present two compilation techniques that, when combined, enable text to be generated from systemic grammars in real-time. The first technique involves representing systemic grammars as C++ class hierarchies--this allows the inheritance in the classification hierarchies to be computed automatically by the C++ compiler at compile-time. The second technique follows from the strafified/realizati nnal nature of systemic description that results in a mapping from semantic /contextual features to the grammar--such a mapping means that detailed grammatical features can be infed directly, without a top-down traversal of the systemic classification hierarchies. When the mapping provides the leaf nodes of an instantiatinn of the grammar (as might be expected in routine generation), no traversal of the grammar is necessary whatsoever, since all the realization information from higher-level nodes has been inherited by the leaf nodes at compile-time. In such cases the text can be output in less than a second even on reitlively slow wonkstations; on a 22 MIPS machine the run-time is too small to measure.