{ "paper_id": "P80-1024", "header": { "generated_with": "S2ORC 1.0.0", "date_generated": "2023-01-19T08:43:10.800579Z" }, "title": "[.ooking at the Proceedings of last year's Annual Meeting, one sccs that the session most closely parallcling this one was entitled Language Structure and Par~ing. [n avcry nice prescnu~fion, Martin Kay was able to unite the papers of that scssion uudcr a single theme. As hc stated it", "authors": [ { "first": "W", "middle": [ "A" ], "last": "Martin", "suffix": "", "affiliation": { "laboratory": "Laboratory for Computcr Science", "institution": "Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge", "location": { "postCode": "02139", "region": "Massachu.~tts" } }, "email": "" } ], "year": "", "venue": null, "identifiers": {}, "abstract": "", "pdf_parse": { "paper_id": "P80-1024", "_pdf_hash": "", "abstract": [], "body_text": [ { "text": "\"Illcre has been a shift of emphasis away from highly ~tmctured systems of complex rules as the principal repository of infi~mmtion about the syntax of a language towards a view in which the responsibility is distributed among the Icxicoo. semantic parts of the linguistic description, aod a cognitive or strategic component. Concomitantly, interest has shiRed from al!lorithms for syntactic analysis and generation, in which the central stnlctorc and the exact seqtlencc of events are paramount, to systems iu which a heavier burden is carried by the data stl ucture and in wilich the order of,:vents is a m,.~ter of strategy.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "['his ycar. the papers of the session represent a greater diversity of rescan:h directions. The paper by Hayes. and thc paper by Wilcnsky and Aren~ arc both examples of what Kay had in mind. but the paper I)y Church, with rcgard to the question of algorithms, is quite the opposite. He {tolds that once the full range uf constraints dcscribing pc~plc's processing behavior has been captul'ed, the best parsing strategies will be rather straightforwarcL and easily cxplaincd as algorithms.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Perilaps the seven papers in this year's session can best be introduecd by briefly citing ~mc of the achievcmcqts and problems reported in the works they refcrence,", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In thc late i960\"s Woods tweeds70] capped an cfTort by several people to dcvch)p NI'N parsing. 'lllis well known technique applies a smdghtforward top down, left CO right` dcpth fic~t pat.~ing algorithm to a syntactic grammar. I-:~pccialiy in the compiled fi)rm produced by Ilorton [Bnrton76~, ] . the parser was able to produce the first parse in good time. but without ~mantic constraints, numcroos syn~ictic analyses could be and ~,mctimcs were fou.nd, especially in scntenccs with conjunctions. A strength of the system was the ATN grammar, which can be dc~ribcd as a sct of context frec production rules whose right hand sides arc finite statc machincs and who.~ U'ansition arcs have bccn augmented with functions able to read and set registers, and also able to block a transition on their an:. Many people have found this a convenient fonnulism in which m develop grammars of Engtish. The Woods ATN parser was a great success and attempts were made to exploit it (a) as a modc[ of human processing and (b) as a tool for writing grammars. At the same time it was recognized to havc limimdoos. It wasn't tolerant of errors, and it couldn't handle unknown words or constructions (there were n~'tny syntactic constmcdons which it didn't know). In addidon, the question answering system fed by the parser had a weak notion of word and phrase .~emantics and it was not always able to handle quantificrs properly. It is not ctcar thcs\u00a2 components could have supported a stronger interaction with syntactic parsing, had Woods chosen to a~cmpt it.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 274, "end": 293, "text": "Ilorton [Bnrton76~,", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 294, "end": 295, "text": "]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "On the success side. Kaplan [Kaplan72] was inspired to claim that the ATN parser provided a good model tbr some aspects of human processing. Some aspects which might bc modeled are: by ordering the arcs leaving the state where the head noun of'an NP has been ~'ccpccd: a Ix)p am (tcrminuting the NP) is tried before an an: accepting a modifying relative clause. ]-h)wcver, Ricil [Rich75] puims out that dfis an: ordering solution would seem to have diltlculdcs with 2). This sentence is often nut peracived", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 21, "end": 38, "text": "Kaplan [Kaplan72]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "2) They told the girl that Bill liked that he would be at the loath;all game.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "as requiring backup, yet if the arcs an: ordered as for I), it does require backup. There is no doubt that whatever is going on. the awareness of backup in 3) is so much stronger than in 2) that it seems like a different phenomcnoo. To resolve this,", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "3)", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The horse raced past the b,'u'n fell.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "one could claim that perceived backup is some fimction of' the length of the actual b~kup, or maybe of the degree of commiunent to the original path (althoogh it isnt clear what this would mean in ATN terms).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In this session. Ferrari and Stock will turn the are ordering game around and describe, for actual tex~ the probability that a given arc is the correct exit an: from a node. given the an: by wiuch the parser arrived at the node. [t will be intcr~ting to look at their distributions. [n the speech project at IBM War, sou Laboratories [Baker75] it was discovered some time ago that, for a given text, the syntactic class era word could be predicted correctly over 90% of the umo given only the syntactic class of the preceding word` Interestingly, the correctness of' predictions fell off less than 10% whcn only the current word w~ used. One wonders if this same level of skewncss holds across texts, or (what we will hear) for the continuation of phrases. These results should be helpful in discussing the whole issue of arc orderiog\" Implicit in any al~ ordering strategy is the assumption that not all parses of a sentence will be fi)und. Having the \"best\" path, the parscr will stop wben it gets an acceptable analysis. Arc ordering helps find that \"best' path. Marcus [Man:us7g] , agreed with the idea of following only a best path, but he claimed that the reason there is no pe~eived backup in 2) is that the human parser is able to look ahead a few constituents iostead of just one s~ate and one eoilstitucnt in making a u'ansition. He claims this makes a more accurate model of human garden path behavior, but it doesn't address the issue of unlimited stuck depth. Here, Church will describe a parser similar in design co Marcus', except that it conserves memory. This allows Church to address psychological facLS not addrc~qed by either Marcus or the ATN models. Church claims that exploiting stack size constraints will incn:ase the cimnces of building a good best path parser.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 1073, "end": 1083, "text": "[Man:us7g]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Besides psychological modeling, thcre is also an interest m using thc ATN ft)nnalism for writing and teaching grammars. Paramount here is e:;planation, both of the grammar and its appiicatinn to a particu!ar sentence. The papcr by Kchler and Woods reports on this. Weischcdcl picks a particular problem, responding to an input which the ATN can't handle. He a~,'xiatcs a list of diagnostic couditions and actions with each state. When no pur.xc is found, the parser finds tile last store on the path which progressed the thnhcst d)rongh the input string and executes its diagnostic conditions and actions. When a parser uses ,rely syutactic constraints\" one cxpects it to find a lut of parses. UsuuJly the number of parses grows marc than tincarly with sentence length. Thus, for a ~tirly COmlflete grammar and moderate to king sentences, one would expect that the cast of no parses (handled by Wei.%hedcl) would be rare in comparison with the oilier two cases (not handled) where file set of parses doesn't include the correct one, or where the grammar has been mistakenly, written to allow undesired pa!~s\" Success of the above eflol'ts to folinw only the best path would clearly be relevant here. No doubt Wcischcdel's proeedure can help find a lot of bugs if die t~t examples are chosen with a little care. Ihtt there is sdll interesting work to be done on grammar and parser explanation, and Weisehcdcl is onc of those who intends to explore it", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The remaining three papers stem from three separate traditions which reject the strict syntactic ATN formalism, each for its own reasons. They are: Each of these systems claims some advantage over the more widely known and accepted ATN.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The somandc grammar parser can be viewed as a variation of the ATN which attempts to cope with the ATN's lack of semantics. Kapian's work builds on work stancd by Burton [Burton76b] and picked up by Hcndrix et al [ltendrtx78J. The semantic grammar parser uses semanuc in.;tcad of syntactic arc categories. \"l'his collapses syntax and semantics into a single structure. When an ATN parsing strategy is used the result is actuall7 ~ flexible than a syntactic ATN, but it is faster because syntactic possibilities are elin'*in;tted by the semantics of the domain. \"Ilm strategy is justified m terms of the pcrfum'*ancc of actual running systems. Kaplan also calls on a speed criteria in suggest,og (hat when an unkuown word is cncountcred the system assomc all possibilities which will let parsing prncccd. Theo if more than one possibility leads to a successful parse, the system should attempt to rt,~olve the word fi.trthcr by file search or user query.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 163, "end": 181, "text": "Burton [Burton76b]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "As Kaplan points nut. d)is trick is not limited to semantic grammars, but only to systems having enough constraints. It would hc interesting to know hOW w(:. it woutd work for systems using Oshcrson's [Oshcrson78] prcdicahility criterion. instead of troth for their scmanocs. Oshcrson distinguishes between \"green idea\", which he says is silly and \"marricd bachelor\" which he say~ is just raise. Hc ilotes that \"idea is oat green\" is no better, but \"bac[~ehlr is not married\" is fine. Prcdicability is a looser constrain* than Kaplan uses, aud if it would still be cuough to limit database search this wo. \"l bc intcrcv;ng, because prcdicability is easier to implement across a broad domain.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 190, "end": 213, "text": "Oshcrson's [Oshcrson78]", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Wilen~ky is a former stu,:tent of Schank's and thus COlt'*us ffom a tradition which emphastzes sentatmcs over syutax. accounts\" by lcxical relatkms between constituents (if a phrase, for many of the phenomena explained by the old transfomtational grammar. }:or example. given", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "There were reported to have been lions sighted.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "4)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "a typical ATN parser would attempt by register manipulations to make \"lions\" the suhject. Using a phrase approach, \"there be lions sighted\" can be taken as meaning \"exist lions sighted.\" wl)erc \"lions\" is an object and \"sighted\" an object complement \"There\" is related to the \"be\" m \"been\" by a series of relationships between the argumentS of semantic structures. Wilensky appears to have suppressed syntax into his semantic component, and so it will be inrct~ting to sec how he handles the traditional syntactic phenomcna of 4), like passive and verb forms.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "4)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Finalb, the paper by Hayes shows the influence of the speech recognition projects where bad input gave the Woods A'rN great dimcnlty. Text input is much better than speech input. However, examination of actual input [Malhotra75] does show sentences like:", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "4)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "What would have profits have been?", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "5)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Fortunately, these cases are rare. Much more likely is clipsis and the omission of syntax when the semantics are clear. For example, the missing commas in", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "5)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Give ratios of manufacturing costs to sales for plants 1 2 3 and 4 for 72 and 73.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "6)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Examples like these show that errors and omissions are not random phenomena and that there can be something to the study of errors and how to deal with diem.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "6)", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In summary, it can be seen ~at while much progress has been made in consmtcting u~bic parsers, the basic i~ues, such as the division of syntax. semantics\" and pragmatics both in representation and in urdcr uf processing, are still up for grabs. 'l'be problem has plenty of structure, so there is good fun to be had.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "6)", "sec_num": null } ], "back_matter": [], "bib_entries": { "BIBREF0": { "ref_id": "b0", "title": "Stochastic Modeling for Automatic Speech Understanding", "authors": [ { "first": ".", "middle": [ "J" ], "last": "Baker", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Baker. J.K. \"Stochastic Modeling for Automatic Speech Understanding,\" Sneech Rceoeuition.\" lnvi[~ ~ Pap~r~ ~ ~ IEEE SvmnosiurTL Reddy, D.R. (E'kt.), ]975.", "links": null }, "BIBREF1": { "ref_id": "b1", "title": "Polyadicity: Part I of a Theory of l.exical Rules and Rcpreseflmtions", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Bresnan", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Joan", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1980, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Bresnan. Joan. \"Polyadicity: Part I of a Theory of l.exical Rules and Rcpreseflmtions,\" MI'[\" Department of Linguistics (January 1980).", "links": null }, "BIBREF2": { "ref_id": "b2", "title": "A Compiling System fnr Augmented Transition Networks", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Burton", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "R", "middle": [], "last": "Richard", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "William", "middle": [ "A" ], "last": "Woods", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Burton. Richard R. and Woods, William A. \"A Compiling System fnr Augmented Transition Networks,\" COLING 76.", "links": null }, "BIBREF3": { "ref_id": "b3", "title": "Semantic Grammar: An Engineering Technique [or Constructing Natural I~mguage Undcr~tanding Systems", "authors": [ { "first": "Richard", "middle": [ "R" ], "last": "Burton", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "Bolt. Beranek, and Newman", "volume": "3453", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Burton. Richard R. \"Semantic Grammar: An Engineering Technique [or Constructing Natural I~mguage Undcr~tanding Systems,\" BBN Report 3453, Bolt. Beranek, and Newman, Boston, Ma. (December D76).", "links": null }, "BIBREF4": { "ref_id": "b4", "title": "l)cveloping a Natural I.anguage Interface to Complex l')ata", "authors": [ { "first": "Gary", "middle": [ "G" ], "last": "Hendrix", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "E", "middle": [ "D" ], "last": "Sacerdoa", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [ "D" ], "last": "Sagalowicz", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [ "J" ], "last": "Slocum", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1978, "venue": "ACM l\"rans, ~ Dqf.ahase Systems. vo", "volume": "3", "issue": "", "pages": "105--147", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Hendrix, Gary G. Sacerdoa, E.D., Sagalowicz. D.. and Slocum. J. \"l)cveloping a Natural I.anguage Interface to Complex l')ata,\" ACM l\"rans, ~ Dqf.ahase Systems. vo[. 3, no. 2 (June 1978). pp. 105-147.", "links": null }, "BIBREF5": { "ref_id": "b5", "title": "Augmented Transition Networks as Psychological Models of Sentence Comprehension", "authors": [ { "first": "Ronald", "middle": [ "M" ], "last": "Kaplan", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1972, "venue": "Artificial Intcllieenee", "volume": "", "issue": "3", "pages": "77--100", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Kaplan, Ronald M. \"Augmented Transition Networks as Psychological Models of Sentence Comprehension,\" Artificial Intcllieenee, 3 (October 1972). pp. 77-100.", "links": null }, "BIBREF6": { "ref_id": "b6", "title": "l)esign Critcria for a Knowlcdgc-Based English Language System for Management: An Experimental Analysis", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Malhotra", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Ashok", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1975, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Malhotra. Ashok. \"l)esign Critcria for a Knowlcdgc-Based English Language System for Management: An Experimental Analysis,\" MIT/LCS/rR-1.46, MIT, Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge. Ma. (February 1975).", "links": null }, "BIBREF7": { "ref_id": "b7", "title": "A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural l.'mguages", "authors": [ { "first": "`", "middle": [], "last": "Marcus", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Mitchell", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Marcus` Mitchell. \"A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural l.'mguages,\" Ph.D. thesis. MIT Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Cambridge, Ma. (to be published by MrT Press).", "links": null }, "BIBREF8": { "ref_id": "b8", "title": "Three Conditions on Conceptual Naturalness", "authors": [ { "first": "Danicl", "middle": [ "N" ], "last": "Oshcrson", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "Cognition", "volume": "6", "issue": "", "pages": "263--289", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Oshcrson, Danicl N. \"Three Conditions on Conceptual Naturalness.\" Cognition, 6 (197g), pp. 263-289.", "links": null }, "BIBREF9": { "ref_id": "b9", "title": "A Concise Grammar o~Ctmiemnorarv F.nnlisll, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [ "R" ], "last": "Quirk", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [ "S" ], "last": "Greenbaum", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Quirk. R. and Greenbaum. S. A Concise Grammar o~Ctmiemnorarv F.nnlisll, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. New York (L973).", "links": null }, "BIBREF10": { "ref_id": "b10", "title": "On the Psychological Reality of Augmented Transition Network Models of Sentence Cumprehension", "authors": [ { "first": "Charles", "middle": [], "last": "Rich", "suffix": "" } ], "year": null, "venue": "MIT Artilicial Intelligence I.aboratory", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Rich, Charles. \"On the Psychological Reality of Augmented Transition Network Models of Sentence Cumprehension,\" unpublished paper, MIT Artilicial Intelligence I.aboratory, Cambridge, Ma. (July [97S).", "links": null }, "BIBREF11": { "ref_id": "b11", "title": "Transition Network Grammars for Natural Language Analysis", "authors": [ { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "Woods", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "", "middle": [], "last": "William", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1970, "venue": "CACM", "volume": "13", "issue": "10", "pages": "591--602", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Woods. William A. \"Transition Network Grammars for Natural Language Analysis\" CACM 13. 10 (October 1970), pp. 591-602.", "links": null } }, "ref_entries": { "TABREF1": { "type_str": "table", "content": "", "num": null, "text": "He ~s right in emphasizing Ore importance of phrase scmantics. The grammarians Quirk aud Grcenhaum [Quirk731 poiut out tile syntactic ,ll'*d semantic importaucc of verb phrases over verbs.-in hngutstms, lhesnan [Ih'csnang0l is developing a theory of Icxical phrases which", "html": null } } } }