Deterministic Parsing

Abstract

Non-determinism arises in a parsing process which proceeds on a word by word or constituent by constituent basis because of (often local) ambiguity in the grammar and lexicon. The degree of non-determinism can therefore be reduced by expanding the focus of attention to include more than just the ‘next’ constituent or word. Marcus has recently generated considerable interest with the claim that a small expansion of this sort allows English to be parsed deterministicaliy in all but a few cases and in those it is claimed that people have difficulty as well.