Method and system for natural language parsing using podding

Abstract

A method and system for determining the likelihood that a certain syntax rule when applied to a partial parse of an input will produce a node that will be part of the correct parse for the input. Each syntax rule indicates a higher-level syntactic construct that can be formed from one or more lower-level syntactic constructs. Each syntax rule has a probability which indicates the likelihood that the syntax rule will succeed and produce a node in the resulting parse tree. Each syntax rule also has a heuristic score formula indicating how to calculate a heuristically derived score for the higher-level syntactic construct created when the syntax rule is successfully applied. When a syntax rule is successfully applied while parsing the input sentence, the system calculates a probability for the higher-level syntactic construct produced by the syntax rule. The system then calculates a heuristic score for the higher-level syntactic construct produced by the syntax rule based on the heuristic score formula of the syntax rule and the calculated heuristic scores of the lower-level syntactic constructs to which the syntax rule was successfully applied. The system then combines the calculated probabilities and the calculated heuristic scores to guide the selecting of syntax rules to apply.