Evaluating Parsing Strategies Using Standardized Parse Files

The availability of large files of manuallyreviewed parse trees from the University of Pennsylvania "tree bank", along with a program for comparing system-generated parses against these "standard" parses, provides a new opportunity for evaluating different parsing strategies. We discuss some of the restructuring required to the output of our parser so that it could be meaningfully compared with these standard parses. We then describe several heuristics for improving parsing accuracy and coverage, such as closest attachment of modifiers, statistical grammars, and fitted parses, and present a quantitative evaluation of the improvements obtained with each strategy. 1 The Problem The systematic improvement of parsing strategies requires some way of evaluating competing strategies. We need to understand their effect on both overall system performance and the ability to parse sentences correctly. In order to evaluate parser output, we will need a file of standard "c...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1992
• Where: ANLP
• Authors: Ralph Grishman, Catherine Macleod, John Sterling
• Keywords: ANLP 1992, Parse Trees, Parsing Strategies, Standard Parses