Tech Talk: Introduction to Aarne Ranta’s GF, the Grammatical Framework

  • Date  Time
  • Speaker
  • Location

The talk will be presented by Iavor Diatchki on Tuesday, February 16th, at 10:30am.(slides)Abstract: The Grammatical Framework (created by Aarne Ranta) is a programming language for multilingual grammar applications. It may be seen in a number of different ways:

  • as a special-purpose language for grammars, like YACC or Happy, but not restricted to programming languages;
  • as a functional language, like Haskell or SML, but specialized to grammar writing;
  • as a logical framework, like Agda or Coq, but equipped with concrete syntax in addition to logic;
  • as a natural language processing framework, like LKB, or Regulus, but based on functional programming and type theory.

This talk is an introduction to GF’s basic concepts by example. We will look at how to define the meaning and syntax of a language, perform simple translations, define semantic properties, and how to use GF together with another language such as Haskell.Bio: Iavor Diatchki is a R&D Engineer at Galois, Inc. with a Ph.D. from the Oregon Graduate Institute.Details:

  • Date: February 16th, 2010, Tuesday
  • Time: 10:30am
  • Location: Galois Inc., 421 SW 6th Ave. Suite 300 (3rd floor of the Commonwealth building)


Galois has been holding weekly technical seminars for several years on topics from functional programming, formal methods, compiler and language design, to cryptography, and operating system construction, with talks by many figures from the programming language and formal methods communities. The talks are open and free. An RSVP is not required, but feel free to contact the organizer with questions and comments.