Extending XPath to support linguistic queries

Bird, S. G. and Chen, Y. and Davidson, S. and Lee, H. and Zheng, Y. (2005) Extending XPath to support linguistic queries . In Proceedings Programming Language Technologies for XML (PLANX), pages pp. 35-46, Long Beach, USA.

Abstract

Linguistic research and language technology development employ large data repositories of ordered trees, known as “treebanks.” We define a path language for linguistic trees represented in XML called LPath, based on XPath, and provide a new labeling scheme for LPath query evaluation. We report a strategy for evaluating expressions of the language against treebank data. The language contains three expressive features which are important for linguistic query, namely immediate precedence, subtree scoping, and edge alignment. We motivate and illustrate these features with a variety of linguistic queries. This work provides a scalable and reusable model for linguistic tree queries, and relates it to well-understood semistructured and relational languages.