Finite-State Technology as a Programming Environment

Finite-state technology is considered the preferred model for representing the phonology and morphology of natural languages. The attractiveness of this technology for natural language processing stems from four sources: modularity of the design, due to the closure properties of regular languages and relations; the compact representation that is achieved through minimization; efficiency, which is a result of linear recognition time with finite-state devices; and reversibility, resulting from the declarative nature of such devices. However, when wide-coverage grammars are considered, finite-state technology does not scale up well, and the benefits of this technology can be overshadowed by the limitations it imposes as a programming environment for language processing. This paper focuses on several aspects of large-scale grammar development. Using a real-world benchmark, we compare a finite-state implementation with an equivalent Java program with respect to ease of development, modu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CICLING
• Authors: Shuly Wintner
• Keywords: CICLING 2007, Language Processing, Natural Language, Natural Language Processing, finite-state Technology