Interleaving Syntax and Semantics in an Efficient Bottom-Up Parser

Abstract

We describe an efficient bottom-up parser that interleaves syntactic and semantic structure building. Two techniques are presented for reducing search by reducing local ambiguity: Limited left-context constraints are used to reduce local syntactic ambiguity, and deferred sortal-constraint application is used to reduce local semantic ambiguity. We experimentally evaluate these techniques, and show dramatic reductions in both number of chart-edges and total parsing time. The robust processing capabilities of the parser are demonstrated in its use in improving the accuracy of a speech recognizer.