Syntactic Preferences For Robust Parsing With Semantic Preferences

Using constraints in robust parsing seems to have what we call "robust parsing paradox". Preference Sem,'ultics and Coimecfionisln both offered a promising approach to fins problem. However, Prefelence Semantics has not addressed the problem of how to make flfll use of syntactic constraints, and Connectiouism has some inherent difficulties of its OWll which prevent it producing a practical system. In this paper we are proposing a method to add syntactic preferences to the Preferealce Semantics paradigm while nmiutaining its fundamental philosophy. It will be shown ttmt syntactic preferences can be coded as a set of weights associated with the set of symbolically manipulatable rules of a new grammar formalism. ~121e syntactic preferences such codezt can lye easily used to compute with semantic preferences. With the help of some tectmiques borrowed from Connectioeisln, these weights can be adjusted through tralrting.