Understanding Natural Language Using a Variable Grammar.

Abstract

A natural language understanding system is described that is designed to work with variable grammars. This is distinct from most natural language systems which can make automatic lexical changes in the dictionary, but can alter the grammar only by actual programming changes. This parsing scheme was developed as part of a larger system that could detect limitations to its grammar and automatically update the grammar, thereby improving its performance. Thus, the need to parse with a variable grammar. The key issue is not the ability to syntactically parse with different grammars, but the ability to mesh semantics with the parses defined by grammars of varying complexity.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA007573

Entities

People

  • Larry R. Harris

Organizations

  • Dartmouth College

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Automatic
  • Computer Programming
  • Dictionaries
  • Formal Languages
  • Grammars
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Natural Language Understanding
  • Natural Languages
  • Semantics
  • Social Sciences
  • Words (Language)

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computational Linguistics