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From: edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: In layman's terms.
Message-ID: <1570@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Jun-87 09:21:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.1570
Posted: Mon Jun  1 09:21:57 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jun-87 00:38:02 EDT
References: <13263@watmath.UUCP> <639@elmgate.UUCP>
Reply-To: edwards@unix.macc.wisc.edu.UUCP (mark edwards)
Organization: UW-Madison Academic Computer Center
Lines: 27
Keywords: English, syntax, parses

In article <639@elmgate.UUCP> mj@elmgate.UUCP (Mark A. Johnson) writes:
:
:	One of the nice things about the ATN
:	parser is that (for the language described by the ATN),  it can
:	be written to produce a recursive data structure that describes
:	all of the possible meanings of a sentence available to the ATN.
:	This means that, with a carefully described grammar and for a
:	particular subset of a language, syntactically unambiguous 
:	sentences will produce a unique parse,  and ambiguous sentences
:	("Time flies like an arrow") will produce multiple parses.
:	Semantic analyzes specially designed for acting on the frames
:	produced by the ATN parser can then choose an appropriate parse,
:	ask for clarification, update knowledge bases, etc.  

   An ATN must be intuitively pleasing for an MSEE. And for a simple 
   sentence like "Time flies like an arrow", it is easy enough for
   the parser to parse. There are not many permutation for a string
   of five words. (Of course for langauges like japanese with a lot
   of homonyms, it could be much harder).  As sentences get longer,
   and gapping and deletion start to happen, the inappropriateness
   of recursive structures bog down the processing.

   mark
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