Creating a Finite-State Parser with Application Semantics

Parsli is a finite-state (FS) parser which can be tailored to the lexicon, syntax, and semantics of a particular application using a hand-editable declarative lexicon. The lexicon is defined in terms of a lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar, which is subsequently mapped to a FS representation. This approach gives the application designer better and easier control over the natural language understanding component than using an off-the-shelf parser. We present results using Parsli on an application that creates 3D-images from typed input. 1 Parsing and Application-Specific Semantics One type of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) application is exemplified by the database access problem: the user may type in free source language text, but the NLU component must map this text to a fixed set of actions dictated by the underlying application program. We will call such NLU applications "applicationsemantic NLU". Other examples of applicationsemantic NLU include interfaces to comma...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: COLING
• Authors: Owen Rambow, Srinivas Bangalore, Tahir Butt, Alexis Nasr, Richard Sproat
• Keywords: Applicationsemantic Nlu, COLING 2002, COLING 2008, Natural Language, Parsers