ABSTRACT
Grammar formalisms based on the encoding of grammatical information in complex-valued feature systems enjoy some currency both in linguistics and natural-language-processing research. Such formalisms can be thought of by analogy to context-free grammars as generalizing the notion of nonterminal symbol from a finite domain of atomic elements to a possibly infinite domain of directed graph structures of a certain sort. Unfortunately, in moving to an infinite nonterminal domain, standard methods of parsing may no longer be applicable to the formalism. Typically, the problem manifests itself as gross inefficiency or even nontermination of the algorithms. In this paper, we discuss a solution to the problem of extending parsing algorithms to formalisms with possibly infinite nonterminal domains, a solution based on a general technique we call restriction. As a particular example of such an extension, we present a complete, correct, terminating extension of Earley's algorithm that uses restriction to perform top-down filtering. Our implementation of this algorithm demonstrates the drastic elimination of chart edges that can be achieved by this technique. Finally, we describe further uses for the technique---including parsing other grammar formalisms, including definite-clause grammars; extending other parsing algorithms, including LR methods and syntactic preference modeling algorithms; and efficient indexing.
- Ades, A. E. and M. J. Steedman, On the order of words. Linguistics and Philosophy, 4(4):517--558, 1982.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ford, M., J. Bresnan, and R. Kaplan. A competence based theory of syntactic closure. In J. Bresnan, editor, The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982.Google Scholar
- Gawron, J. M., J. King, J. Lamping, E. Loebner, E. A. Paulson, G. K. Pullum, I. A. Sag, and T. Wasow. Processing English with a generalized phrase structure grammar. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 74--81, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 16--18 June 1982. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gazdar, G., E. Klein, G. K. Pullum, and I. A. Sag. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, England, and Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1985.Google Scholar
- Kaplan, R. and J. Bresnan. Lexical-functional grammar: a formal system for grammatical representation. In J. Bresnan, editor, The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983.Google Scholar
- Kay, M. An algorithm for compiling parsing tables from a grammar. 1980. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Palo Alto, California.Google Scholar
- Matsumoto, Y., H. Tanaka, H. Hirakawa, H. Miyoshi, and H. Yasukawa. BUP: a bottom-up parser embedded in Prolog. New Generation Computing, 1:145--158, 1983.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Montague, R. The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English. In R. H. Thomason, editor. Formal Philosophy, pages 188--221, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1974.Google Scholar
- Pereira, F. C. N. Logic for natural language analysis. Technical Note 275, Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, California, 1983.Google Scholar
- Pereira, F. C. N. and S. M. Shieber. The semantics of grammar formalisms seen as computer languages. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Computational Linguistics. Stanford University, Stanford, California, 2--7 July 1984. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pereira, F. C. N. and D. H. D. Warren. Parsing as deduction. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. pages 137--144, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 15--17 June 1983. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shieber, S. M. Criteria for designing computer facilities for linguistic analysis. To appear in Linguistics.Google Scholar
- Shieber, S. M. The design of a computer language for linguistic information. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 2--7 July 1984. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shieber, S. M. Sentence disambiguation by a shift reduce parsing technique. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 113--118, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 15--17 June 1983. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Shieber, S. M., H. Uszkoreit, F. C. N. Pereira, J. J. Robinson, and M. Tyson. The formalism and implementation of PATR-II. In Research on Interactive Acquisition and Use of Knowledge, SRI International. Menio Park, California, 1983.Google Scholar
- Wise, M. J. and D. M. W. Powers. Indexing Prolog clauses via superimposed code words and field encoded words. In Proceedings of the 1984 International symposium on Logic Programming, pages 203--210, IEEE Computer Society Press, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 6--9 February 1984.Google Scholar
- Using restriction to extend parsing algorithms for complex-feature-based formalisms
Recommendations
Parsing some constrained grammar formalisms
In this paper we present a scheme to extend a recognition algorithm for Context-Free Grammars (CFG) that can be used to derive polynomial-time recognition algorithms for a set of for-malisms that generate a superset of languages generated by CFG. We ...
LLLR parsing
SAC '13: Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied ComputingThe idea of an LLLR parsing is presented. An LLLR(k) parser can be constructed for any LR(k) grammar but it produces the left parse of the input string in linear time (in respect to the length of the derivation) without backtracking. If used as a basis ...
Restriction and termination in parsing with feature-theoretic grammars
Shieber (1987) describes a technique for limiting the number of active edges introduced into a chart by top-down prediction in chart parsers for PATR grammars, without affecting the correctness or completeness of the parser. That technique, termed ...
Comments