Nigel: A Systemic Grammar for Text Generation.

Programming a computer to write text which meets a prior need is a challenging research task. As part of such research, Nigel, a large programmed grammar of English, has been created in the framework of systemic linguistics begun by Halliday. In addition to specifying function and structures of English, Nigel has a novel semantic stratum which specifies the situations in which each grammatical feature should be used. The report consists of three papers on Nigel: an introductory overview, the script of a demonstration of its use in generation, and an exposition of how Nigel relates to the systemic framework. Although the effort to develop Nigel is significant both as computer science research and as linguistic inquiry the outlook of the report is oriented to its linguistic significance.