UsingWomb Grammars for Inducing the Grammar of a Subset of Yorùbá Noun Phrases

We address the problem of inducing the grammar of an under-resourced language, Yorùbá, from the grammar of English using an efficient and linguistically savvy, constraint solving model of grammar induction Womb Grammars (WG). Our proposed methodology employs Womb Grammars in parsing a subset of noun phrases of the target language Yorùbá, from the grammar of the source language English, which is described as properties between pairs of constituents. Our model is implemented in CHRG (Constraint Handling Rule Grammars) and has been used for inducing the grammar of a useful subset of Yorùbá noun phrases. Interesting extensions to the original Womb Grammar model are presented, motivated by the specific needs of Yorùbá and similar tone languages.