Abstract:
Monologue grammar development for under-resourced languages is very
slow and laborious (involves creating rules to generate the computational
grammar to enable analysis and synthesis of the language(s) in question).
However, the need for computational grammar continues to soar in this
technology-driven economy for information synthesis and analysis. This
paper aims to set up an experiment in the grammatical framework (GF), to
evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the Bantu parameterized grammar
to bootstrap a new grammar for Swahili. The goal is to investigate how this
approach of bootstrapping grammar in a multilingual environment is effective
and efficient in reducing the development effort. The bootstrapping approach
uses the GF morphology-driven approach to develop portable and unique
segments of Swahili grammar. The bootstrapped Swahili grammar resulted in
a shareability of 100%, 71.11%, 68.75%, and 91.41% at category
linearization, paradigms, parameters and syntax rules respectively. The
portability was at 15.55%, 18.57%, and 8.59% at paradigms, parameters and
syntax rules, respectively. Finally, this paper contributes in: first, provides an
approach that leads to an effective and efficient method for developing and
bootstrapping computational grammar for the under-resourced Bantu
languages. Secondly, the research provided a Swahili grammar.