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From: rusin@ux1.lbl.gov (David J Rusin)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Need an English parser
Message-ID: <2796@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 8 Jun 89 19:35:04 GMT
Sender: usenet@helios.ee.lbl.gov
Reply-To: rusin@ux1.lbl.gov (David J Rusin)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Lines: 19



OK, I've had enough. I use a word processor to make my letters look
pretty, a spell-checker to make sure they only have real words in them, and
a phrase-checker to pick out glaring bad phrases. Despite it all, a
letter I just sent out had "form" where it should have had "from". I
need a sentence-checker to look for errors on a less local level. Now,
I know human languages are notoriously difficult to understand, but in
third grade we learned a very mechanical process (diagramming
sentences) that could at least see if a sentence follows the rules of
ordinary English syntax. Has anyone found a program that will do this,
and which is willing to report errors like "I can't undertand the
following sentence..."? I'll take what I can get, but of course the
ideal is public domain source and executable; all the better if I don't
need to use more disk space to store another English-language
dictionary in addition to the spell-checker.

Dave Rusin, Math. Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley CA
Internet: rusin@ux1.lbl.gov     UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ux1!rusin