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From: marty1@houdi.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: English grammar (was Re: In layman's terms.)
Message-ID: <1116@houdi.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-May-87 18:01:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: houdi.1116
Posted: Tue May 26 18:01:38 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 27-May-87 04:55:24 EDT
References: <13263@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 41
Keywords: English, Backus-Naur Form, syntax.
Summary: What is the current status of English grammar for computers?

In article <13263@watmath.UUCP>, erhoogerbeet@watmath.UUCP writes:
> Hello. I am an undergrad going into computer science....
> 
> 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?

About 30 years ago when I was at MIT doing graduate study in EE, my
wife was talking with a guy named Chomsky who wanted to do machine
translation.  The effort resulted in new approaches to English grammar,
but not in machine translation.

Basically, people do not classify words and structures neatly.  Some
words are syntactically unique, and some structures are valid only for
a specific sequence of words.  Some sentences are recognized as
syntactically correct by some speakers of English but not others.
We read, write, talk, listen, understand and misunderstand each other
in this chaos because our brains are not structured like computers.

> As I understand it so far, natural language processing would have at least
> two levels (syntactic, semantic) and that syntactic checking level would
> be the basis of the other.

True.

> "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously." syntactically but not semantically
>   correct.

Your ideas, being those of an undergraduate, are green, and further,
since you lack imagination, are colorless.  Put them to sleep.  I hope
they sleep calmly, but if they sleep furiously, that's your problem. :-)
Now that may be semantically correct, but is it factually correct?

Seriously, I would like to know what (in plain English, if possible) is
going on in formal English grammar and natural language parsing.

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	ihnp4!houdi!marty1