9th GF Summer School, 2025
Gothenburg, Sweden
18th – 29th August 2025
About
Grammatical Framework (GF) is a grammar formalism and a programming language for multilingual computational grammars. It is based on the idea of a shared abstract syntax and mappings between the abstract syntax and concrete languages. GF has hundreds of users all over the world.
The GF Resource Grammar Library (RGL) implements the main syntax rules of over 40 languages with a shared abstract syntax, and its WordNet-based interlingual lexicon includes 24 languages. These resources are freely available as open-source software.
In combination with the linguistic knowledge contained in the RGL, GF software is aimed to help non-linguist programmers to build systems that have high-quality natural language processing as a component. For linguists, GF provides a platform for powerful abstractions and generalizations, including cross-lingual ones.
You will find the GF book a very good companion to your studies (available also as an e-book). However, the book is not a requirement for successful participation in the summer school.
Registration
Please register via this registration form.
There is no registration or participation fee. However the participants need to support their own travel and stay, including accommodation and meals.
Special themes
Informalization and autoformalization of formal mathematicss
Formal mathematics, implemented in systems such as Lean, Coq, and Agda, comprises an increasing amount of mathematical knowledge. The project Informath aims to establish mappings between formal mathematics and ordinary mathematical language. This would make the results of formal mathematics more available both to mathematicians and to a wider audience. It would also help AI systems to construct formal proofs by making informal mathematics available as training material. The core of Informath is multilingual grammars defined in GF, Grammatical Framework.
Numerous earlier projects have shown the potential of GF in mapping between formal and informal languages. Building on their results and experiences, and developing some new methods, Informath aims to extend the coverage to a new level.
Abstract Wikipedia
Our second theme is Abstract Wikipedia: an effort in multilingual natural language generation at a large scale, targeting a diverse set of languages and language families. A group at Chalmers is working on generating natural language from Wikidata, and in addition, we have invited speakers from the project Wikidata for the People of Africa.
The special themes are present in two ways:
- (Optional) lectures and hands-on sessions during the second week of the summer school;
- Possibility to choose a summer school project and get expert guidance in these areas.
The summer school is pefectly suitable for a student who is interested in other aspects of grammar engineering.
Schedule
Week 1 (August 18–22): Introduction to GF and multilingual grammar programming
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9–12: Lectures | room: EL41 Aarne Ranta: A tour of the GF Ecosystem. Small grammars. |
room: EL41 Arianna Masciolini: Mini resource grammar. |
room: EL53 Inari Listenmaa: Extended mini resource grammar. |
room: EL53 Herbert Lange: Full resource grammar and its API. Krasimir Angelov: WordNet in GF. |
room: EL53 Design and implementation of application grammars. (Participant presentations.) |
| Lunch | |||||
| 13:30–17: Hands‑on | room: EL41 Installing GF, building small grammars |
room: EL41 Starting mini resource in GF shell |
room: EL42 Work on projects |
room: EL42 Work on projects |
room: EL53 Participant presentations: plans for summer school projects |
How to find the rooms
The first two days are in the room EL41. Below is a set of photo instructions how to find the classroom, when you enter from Hörsalsvägen 11. (The other EL-rooms are next to EL41, we will show them to you on Monday and/or Tuesday.)
Weekend excursions
If you are interested in joining one or both excursions, please fill out this form!
On Saturday 23 August, we have a chance to get a private guided tour at Göteborgs Remfabrik – Textile Heritage Centre. It's located in central Gothenburg, so you can combine it easily with other plans for Saturday.
On Sunday 24 August, we will visit the island Tjörn, about 60 km from Gothenburg. The excursion will take all day from morning to evening. The program consists of hiking, swimming (for those who want), barbecue and visiting the Pilane sculpture park.
Photo of Tjörn by Bengt Oberger from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Week 2 (August 25-29): Advanced work in specialized tracks
Tentative schedule. We welcome more talks on these topic or anything else!
| Monday: GF in linguistic description | Tuesday: Informalizing mathematics | Wednesday: Wikidata | Thursday: Research talks | Friday: Your summer school projects | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9–12 | room: EL52 Laurette Pretorius: An update on the Southern Bantu Resource Grammar projects. Laurette Marais: Applying Bantu Resource Grammars in South Africa. |
room: EL53 Aarne Ranta: The Informath project |
room: EL53 Krasimir Angelov: Large-scale grammars for natural language generation Denny Vrandečić: Abstract Wikipedia |
room: EL53 Anssi Moisio: Comparing Compositional Generalisation Benchmarks John Camilleri: GF in the real world |
room: ES61 Participant presentations |
| Lunch | |||||
| 13:30–17 | room: EL52 Work on projects |
room: EL53 Work on projects |
room: EL53 Work on projects |
room: EL53 Ranim Khojah: From Human-to-Human to Human-to-Bot Conversations in Software Engineering Work on projects |
Teachers and invited speakers
| Name | Affiliation | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Aarne Ranta | University of Gothenburg | GF tutorial; Informath |
| Inari Listenmaa | Chalmers University of Technology | GF tutorial |
| Krasimir Angelov | Chalmers University of Technology | Large-scale grammars for natural language generation |
| Herbert Lange | Språkbanken | GF tutorial; Data representation and multilingual generation using GF |
| Arianna Masciolini | University of Gothenburg | GF tutorial |
| John Camilleri | Chalmers University of Technology | GF in real world |
| Denny Vrandečić | Wikimedia | Abstract Wikipedia |
| Laurette Marais | Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (South Africa) | NLP for Bantu languages; Wikidata for the People of Africa |
| Laurette Pretorius | Stellenbosch University | NLP for Bantu languages; Wikidata for the People of Africa |
| Anssi Moisio | Aalto University | Compositional generalisation |
| Ranim Khojah | Chalmers University of Technology | Chatbot conversations in software engineering |
Venue
The summer school will take place in Gothenburg, at Chalmers University of Technology.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering will be in charge of the practical arrangements.
Contact
You can ask general questions about anything GF-related, including the summer school, on GF mailing list and Discord server.
If you have a more specific question, you can contact Inari Listenmaa directly.
Previous GF summer schools
- Eighth GF Summer School (2023) in Tampere
- Seventh GF Summer School (2021) in Singapore
- Sixth GF Summer School (2018) in Stellenbosch, South Africa
- Fifth GF Summer School (2017) in Rīga, Latvia
- Fourth GF Summer School (2015) in Gozo, Malta
- Third GF Summer School (2013) in Frauenchiemsee, Bavaria
- Second GF Summer School (2011) in Barcelona, Spain
- GF Resource Grammar Summer School (2009) in Gothenburg, Sweden