Grammatical Framework Quick Start

This Quick Start shows two examples of how GF can be used. We assume that you have downloaded and installed GF, so that the command gf works for you. See download and install instructions here.

Translation and generation

When you have downloaded and installed GF:

Copy the files Food.gf, FoodEng.gf, and FoodIta.gf. Or go to GF/examples/tutorial/food/, if you have downloaded the GF sources.
Start GF with the command
```
  gf FoodIta.gf FoodEng.gf
```

Translation. Try your first translation by giving the GF command

  parse "this cheese is very very Italian" | linearize -treebank

Generation. Random-generate sentences in two languages:
```
  generate_random | linearize
```
Grammar development. Add words to the Food grammars and try the above commands again. For instance, add the following lines:
```
  Bread : Kind ;          -- in Food.gf
  Black = {s = "bread"} ; -- in FoodEng.gf
  Black = {s = "pane"} ;  -- in FoodIta.gf
```
and start GF again with the same command. Now you can even translate this bread is very Italian.

To lear more on GF commands and grammar development, go to the one of the tutorials:

GF Tutorial: older, more programmer-oriented
GF Resource Tutorial: newer, more linguist-oriented

To learn about how GF is used for easily writing grammars for 16 languages, consult the

GF Resource Grammar Library.

Run-time grammars and web applications

GF has its own "machine language", PGF (Portable Grammar Format), which is recommended for use in applications at run time. To produce a PGF file from the two grammars above, do

  gf -make FoodIta.gf FoodEng.gf
  wrote Food.pgf

You can use this in Haskell and Java programs, and also on web services, as shown in here. To build your own web application, consult the developer wiki.

User Group

You are welcome to join the User Group to get help and discuss GF-related issues!