Reversing F-structure Rewriting for Generation from Meaning Representations

We describe the design of an LFG-based generation system that provides a framework for empirical studies on the choice among grammatical paraphrases (i.e. syntactic alternations), as an effect of interacting soft constraints. To be able to study the relevant variation, we extend the XLE generation architecture so it no longer departs from standard f-structures, but from a more abstract level of (meaning) representation. This representation is constructed by means of XFR term-rewrite rules. We discuss the design of the meaning representation in the light of the surface realisation task. In particular, we address the problem of obtaining a transfer grammar that reverses meaning construction, taking into account the generation performance.