Dutch Grammar in python's NLTK

Question

I am working on a Dutch corpus and I want to know if NLTK has dutch grammar embedded in it so I can parse my sentences? In general does NLTK only work on English? I know that it has the Alpino dutch copora, but there is no indication that the functions (like parsing using CFGs) are made for Dutch also. Thanks

Answer 1

This is a response to my mail from Steven Bird one of the writers of the NLTK book:

NLTK can work for parsing Dutch if you supply the grammar rules. Please consult the NLTK book for guidance: http://www.nltk.org/book You might be able to use the Alpino corpus in order to develop the grammar (or to train a statistical parser). If your primary interest is obtaining parsed sentences of Dutch, I recommend that you try to find an existing parser rather than developing your own.

In the end I ended up using the Alpino parser which is really strong and written in Prolog, but I managed to port(the binary version) in python.