D-rule

D-rules (disambiguation rules) are used to prevent wrong lexical choices, to provoke best matches and to check the consistency of graphs, trees and lists. Differently from T-rules, they do not provoke transformations, but induce or block them, by assigning priorities to natural language phenomena. The set of d-rules form the d-grammar.

Syntax

D-rules follow the general syntax (UNL Grammar Specs:

STATEMENT=P;

Where
STATEMENT is the left side (condition) of a L-rule or a S-rule; and
P, which can range from 0 (impossible) to 255 (necessary), is the probability of occurrence of the STATEMENT

Examples

• List structures
  • (ART)(BLK)(VER)=0; (an article (ART) may not precede a verb (VER))
  • (ART)(BLK)(NOU)=255; (articles (ART) always precede nouns (NOU))
• Syntactic structures
  • agt(VER;ADJ)=0; (an adjective (ADJ) may not be an agent (agt) of a verb (VER))
  • agt(VER;NOU)=255; (agents (agt) of verbs (VER) are always nouns (NOU))
  • VS(VER;ADJ)=0; (an adjective (ADJ) may not be an specifier (VS) of a verb (VER))
  • NS(NOU;DET)=255; (determiners (DET) are always specifiers (NS) of nouns (NOU))