Abstract
Hypothesising that the human parser is a specialized deductive device in which Universal Grammar and parameter settings are represented as axioms provides a model of how knowledge of language can be put to use. The approach is explained via a series of model deductive parsers for Government and Binding Theory, all of which use the same knowledge of language (i.e., underlying axiom system) but differ as to how they put this knowledge to use (i.e., they use different inference control strategies). They differ from most other GB parsers in that the axiom system directly reflects the modular structure of GB theory and makes full use of the multiple levels of reprepresentation posited in GB theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Berwick, R. (1987).Principle-based parsing (MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Technical Report No. 972). (Also to appear inThe processing of linguistic structure. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.)
Berwick, R, & Weinberg, A. (1984).The grammatical basis of linguistic performance. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Chomsky, N. (1981).Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrect: Foris.
Chomsky, N. (1986).Knowledge of language, its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger.
Cohen, J. (1985). Describing Prolog by its interpretation and compilation.C. ACM, 28, 1311–1324.
Cohen, J., & Hickey, T. (1987). Parsing and compiling using Prolog.ACM Trans. Programming Languages and Systems, 9, 125–163.
Gazdar, G., Klein, E., Pullum, G., & Sag, I. (1985).Generalized phrase structure grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Géceg, F., & Steinby, M. (1984).Tree automata, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Genesereth, M., & Nilsson, N. (1987).Logical foundations for artificial intelligence. Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Giannesini, F., Kanoui, H., Pasero, R., & v. Caneghem, M. (1986),Prolog. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Kowalski, R. (1980).Logic for problem solving. New York: North-Holland.
Marcus, M. (1980).A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Marcus, M., Hindle, D., & Fleck, M. (1983). D-Theory: Talking about talking about trees. InProceedings of the 21 st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Miller, D., & Nadathur, G. (1986). Some uses of higher-order logic in computational linguistics. InProceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Columbia University, New York.
Pereira, F., & Shieber, S. (1987).Prolog and natural language processing (CSLI Lecture Notes Series). Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Pereira, F., & Warren, D. (1983). Parsing as deduction. InProceedings of the 21 st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Tamaki, H., & Sato, T. (1984). Unfold/fold transformation of logic programs. InProceedings of the Second International Logic Programming Conference, p. 127–138, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
Van Riemsdijk, H., & Williams, E. (1986).Introduction to the theory of grammar. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Johnson, M. Parsing as deduction: The use of knowledge of language. J Psycholinguist Res 18, 105–128 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069050
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01069050