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From: edusoft@ecf.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: In layman's terms.
Message-ID: <167@mv05.ecf.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 26-May-87 18:12:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: mv05.167
Posted: Tue May 26 18:12:36 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 27-May-87 01:43:40 EDT
References: <13263@watmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: edusoft@mv05.ecf.UUCP (Educational Software)
Organization: Engineering Computing Facility, University of Toronto
Lines: 44
Keywords: English, Backus-Naur Form, syntax.

In article <13263@watmath.UUCP> erhoogerbeet@watmath.UUCP (Edwin (Deepthot)) writes:
>Is there a Backus-Naur Form for the English language itself or is this too
>complicated? If not, how is it that we can understand a huge variety of 
>different sentence forms and still recognize that some are syntactically
>incorrect? Basically, what I am asking is it possible to do syntactic
>checking as if "compiling" a sentence with rules set down in some BNF?

The most easily locatable reference I know of for a phrase-structure
(you'll have to convert to BNF) grammar of English is:

Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar
Gerald Gazdar, Ewen Klein, Geoffrey Pullum and Ivan Sag
1985
Blackwell and Harvard University Press

Mind you, that'll be quite a task, as GPSG abstracts away from
atomic node labels and order in constituents.

You'd probably have to write a GPSG to BNF compiler.

>To be semantically correct, a sentence must be syntactically correct.

A lot of people would agree with this statement, but this does not
allow for partial interpretation of sentences.

It is also possible to interpret syntactically incorrect sentences, such as:

    Me went to the store.

>But there must be someone out there on the net who can set me straight and
>do it in layman's terms.

I have my doubts whether anything in linguistics can be explained in
layman's terms.

bill idsardi
computational linguist
educational software products
1263 bay st.
toronto, ontario
canada
M5R 2C1
922-0087
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