Aspects of a Functional Grammar for Machine Translation

This paper discusses aspects of a functional grammar for Machine Translation (MT). We present a restricted approach to some central issues of "diathesis/ alternations" of predicate-argument structures on a level of "Interface Structure" (IS) for multi-lingual machine translation. The approach generalizes a set of morphosyntactic phenomena into a set of "diathesis" features with specified interactions with other features at IS. The aim of conforming with the overriding goal of simple transfer is discussed. We suggest extensions to the restricted approach to make it more compatible with ongoing work in knowledge-based MT and in text generation. 1 I am grateful to my EUROTRA colleagues Nuria Bel, Mounira Loughraieb, Lee Humphreys, Ursula Reuther, Sibylle Rieder, Anne Becker, and Randy Sharp for critical support in various ways. Recently, I have also profited through critical feedback by John Bateman, Bob Kasper, Leo Wanner, Elke Teich and Elisabeth Maier. I am alone responsible for any remaining weaknesses.