Principle-Based Parsing

Principle-Based Parsing Synopsis

The paperback edition of one of the first books to appear on a new approach to natural language analysis - principle-based parsing. Based on a series of seminars given by the contributors at MIT and grounded in the recent developments in linguistic theory developed at MIT and elsewhere, this volume shows how the large rule-based and language-specific systems that have dominated the conventional computational approach to language may be replaced by a handful of interacting, language-universal principles.;The book covers all areas of natural language from this new perspective: parsing, language acquisition, language variation, machine translation, and psycholinguistics. Each of the chapters focuses on one or more of these areas, presenting implemented and tested computer or psychological models.;The introduction by Berwick surveys the field from a unified vantage point, explaining in a readily-accessible way the strengths and weaknesses of this rapidly-developing new approach to natural language analysis.