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<Paper uid="P06-1019">
  <Title>Sydney, July 2006. c(c)2006 Association for Computational Linguistics Partially Specified Signatures: a Vehicle for Grammar Modularity</Title>
  <Section position="9" start_page="150" end_page="151" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
8 Conclusions
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We advocate the use of PSSs as the correct concept of signature modules, supporting interaction  among grammar modules. Unlike existing approaches, our solution is formally defined, mathematically proven and can be easily and efficiently implemented. Module combination is a commutative and associative operation which meets all the desiderata listed in section 4.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> There is an obvious trade-off between flexibility and strong typedeness, and our definitions can be finely tuned to fit various points along this spectrum. In this paper we prefer flexibility, following Melnik (2005), but future work will investigate other options.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> There are various other directions for future research. First, grammar rules can be distributed among modules in addition to the signature. The definition of modules can then be extended to include also parts of the grammar. Then, various combination operators can be defined for grammar modules (cf. Wintner (2002)). We are actively pursuing this line of research.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Finally, while this work is mainly theoretical, it has important practical implications. We would like to integrate our solutions in an existing environment for grammar development. An environment that supports modular construction of large scale grammars will greatly contribute to grammar development and will have a significant impact on practical implementations of grammatical formalisms.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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