---
title: "Interface syntaxe-sémantique au moyen d'une grammaire"
description: "The authors build on ArabTAG V2.0, a Tree-adjoining grammar (TAG) that XMG2 generates semi-automatically from the… 27 references."
authors: ["Cherifa Ben Khelil", "Chiraz Ben Othmane Zribi", "Denys Duchier", "Yannick Parmentier"]
year: 2018
venue: "Actes de la Conférence TALN. Volume 1 - Articles longs, articles courts de TALN"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/2018.jeptalnrecital-court.8/"
licence: "CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/khelil-2018-interface-syntaxe-semantique-au-moyen/"
---
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# Interface syntaxe-sémantique au moyen d'une grammaire d'arbres adjoints pour l'étiquetage sémantique de l'arabe (Syntax-semantic interface using Tree-adjoining grammar for Arabic semantic labeling)

**Authors:** [Cherifa Ben Khelil](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/cherifa-ben-khelil/), [Chiraz Ben Othmane Zribi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/chiraz-ben-othmane-zribi/), Denys Duchier and [Yannick Parmentier](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yannick-parmentier/) · **Year:** 2018 · **Venue:** [Actes de la Conférence TALN. Volume 1 - Articles longs, articles courts de TALN](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/jeptalnrecital/) ([JEP-TALN-RECITAL (the French-speaking conferences on speech and natural language processing) 2018](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/jeptalnrecital/2018/)) · **Publisher:** [ATALA](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/atala/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2018.jeptalnrecital-court.8/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2018.jeptalnrecital-court.8.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2884326748)

**Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
This work targets the lack of a formal syntax–semantics interface for Modern Standard Arabic. The authors build on ArabTAG V2.0, a Tree-adjoining grammar (TAG) that XMG2 generates semi-automatically from the ArabicXMG meta-grammar. They extend it with frame semantics. Verb-anchored tree families get typed feature-structure frames through a `<frame>` dimension. An `<iface>` dimension holds feature matrices that tie each argument's substitution node to a semantic-role variable. When substitution or adjunction happens during parsing, these shared variables unify, so the small frames of the constituents are merged into the verb's predicate frame, which yields a sentence-level meaning. The role inventory comes automatically from ArabicVerbNet. Its classes are regrouped by syntactic structure to match the grammar's tree families, and the possible role combinations per structure become candidate frames. To reduce ambiguity, the authors use the verb class, role restrictions and preposition type. They describe first evaluation results as encouraging. Exact figures fall in the omitted part of the text. The work matters because it gives Arabic a compositional, rule-based route to semantic role labeling.

## Key points
- The grammar is ArabTAG V2.0, compiled with XMG2 from the ArabicXMG meta-grammar. It covers active and passive verbal sentences, nominal sentences, noun and prepositional phrases, free word order, agreement and agglutinated forms.
- The semantics is carried by two XMG dimensions. `<frame>` holds typed feature-structure frames. `<iface>` holds feature matrices linking syntactic argument nodes to role variables.
- Roles come from ArabicVerbNet (Mousser, 2010). The version used has 334 classes, 7672 verbs and 1393 frames.
- In the worked example, "the policeman chases the thief", the subject receives Agent and the object receives Theme. Noun phrases bring their own small frames, such as person and profession, and these are unified into the verb's frame.
- Ambiguity is narrowed with three constraints: the verb's class, restrictions on role fillers, and the preposition heading a PP. Future work is a larger test corpus and machine learning to make up for gaps in ArabicVerbNet.

## Interesting ideas
- Each grammar unit declares a small table mapping shared global names to variables, and any attachment unifies variables with the same name, so roles flow from argument slots into the predicate frame with no separate mapping pass.
- VerbNet frames are regrouped offline by syntactic pattern so that they line up with the grammar's argument structures, and every allowed role combination is precompiled per pattern.
- A single syntactic structure may keep several candidate frames as distinct readings, which are then pruned by the verb class and by restrictions on role fillers, instead of committing to one reading too early.
- The preposition heading a PP is treated as a hard cue that limits which roles that phrase can take.
- Nouns carry their own small typed frames (for example person or profession), which are inserted into the event frame when they unify with a role slot.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (frames): prag could give each UD argument relation a named variable, so frame slots fill through traceable unification that explains which tree edge produced which role.
- **I2** (world): the compiled verb-class knowledge could be indexed by UD argument configuration, so lookup at parse time becomes a cheap keyed fetch of candidate role assignments.
- **I3** (frames): keeping an explicit set of candidate frames with recorded reasons for each pruning would keep ambiguity resolution explainable.
- **I4** (frames): a mapping from preposition to allowed roles, attached to obl/nmod edges, could filter VerbNet role candidates before any scoring.
- **I5** (world): entity frames from WordNet or Wikidata types could be merged into event frames, giving the world model typed participants directly.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Manouba University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/manouba-university/) — University, Manouba, Tunisia · 6 works · 266 citations
- [National School of Computer Science](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/national-school-of-computer-science/) — University, Manouba, Tunisia · 4 works · 259 citations
- [Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale d'Orléans](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/laboratoire-d-informatique-fondamentale-d-orleans/) — Research institute, Orléans, France · 2 works · 4 citations

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## Cite

Cite as: Cherifa Ben Khelil, Chiraz Ben Othmane Zribi, Denys Duchier and Yannick Parmentier. 2018. Interface syntaxe-sémantique au moyen d'une grammaire d'arbres adjoints pour l'étiquetage sémantique de l'arabe (Syntax-semantic interface using Tree-adjoining grammar for Arabic semantic labeling). Actes de la Conférence TALN. Volume 1 - Articles longs, articles courts de TALN.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{khelil2018interface,
  title = {{Interface syntaxe-sémantique au moyen d'une grammaire d'arbres adjoints pour l'étiquetage sémantique de l'arabe (Syntax-semantic interface using Tree-adjoining grammar for Arabic semantic labeling)}},
  author = {Cherifa Ben Khelil, Chiraz Ben Othmane Zribi, Denys Duchier and Yannick Parmentier},
  booktitle = {Actes de la Conférence TALN. Volume 1 - Articles longs, articles courts de TALN},
  year = {2018},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2018.jeptalnrecital-court.8/}
}
```

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- [↑ back to papers of 2018](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2018/page/8/)

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*Updated 2 November 2026*