\title{Computational Syntactic Analysis of Hebrew Sentences}
\author{Shuly Wintner\thanks{Current Address: IBM Science and Technology, Haifa, Israel 32000} \, and Uzzi Ornan\\
Computer Science, Technion\\ Haifa, Israel 32000.}
\date{}
\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
In recent years many linguistic theories have been developed which
describe the ways by which a grammar for natural languages should be
defined. As an outcome of these theories {\em grammatical formalisms}
have been developed. Many of these formalisms were combined with
parsing algorithms and were implemented as {\em parser compilers} -
systems in which the grammar writer defines the rules of the language,
according to the formalisms, and a parser for the language is
automatically generated. The task of designing a parser for a
specified natural language was now shifted to the problem of designing
its grammar in certain formal ways.

This paper describes the results of a project whose aim was to design
a formal grammar for modern Hebrew. Such a formal grammar has never
been developed before. Since most of the work on grammatical
formalisms was done without regarding Hebrew (and other Semitic
languages as well) we had to choose a formalism that would best fit
writing a grammar for Hebrew. This part of the project has been
described elsewhere. In this paper we describe the details of the
grammar we developed.  The grammar deals with simple, subordinate and
coordinate sentences as well as interrogative sentences.  Some
structures were thoroughly dealt with, among which are noun phrases,
verb phrases, adjectival phrases, relative clauses, object and adjunct
clauses; many types of adjuncts; subcategorization of verbs;
coordination; numerals, etc. For each phrase the parser produces a
description of the structure tree of the phrase as well as a
representation of the syntactic relations in it.  Many examples of
Hebrew phrases are demonstrated, together with the structure the
parser assigns them. In cases where more than one parse is produced,
the reasons of the ambiguity are described.
\end{abstract}