A program for the syntactic analysis of English sentences

Abstract

A program is described which produces syntactic analyses of English sentences with respect to a transformational grammar. The main features of the analyzer are that it uses only a limited dictionary of English words and that it pursues all analysis paths simultaneously while processing the sentence from left to right. The form of representation used for the dictionary and the grammar is indicated and an outline account is given of the analysis procedure. Techniques for keeping the size of the analysis record within reasonable limits and for avoiding the need for dynamic application of certain transformational rules are described. A number of examples of output produced by the program are given. The output includes timing information.