A modal perspective on the computational complexity of attribute value grammar

Abstract

Many of the formalisms used in Attribute Value grammar are notational variants of languages of propositional modal logic and testing whether two Attribute Value descriptions unify amounts to testing for modal satisfiablity. In this paper we put this observation to work. We study the complexity of the satisfiability problem for nine modal languages which mirror different aspects of AVS description formalisms, including the ability to express re-eintrancy, the ability to express generalisations, and the ability to express recursive constraints. Two mail techniques axe used: either Kripke models with desirable properties are constructed, or modalities are used to simulate fragments of Propositional Dynamic Logic. Further possibilities for the application of modal logic in computational linguistics are noted