Incremental Processing and the Hierarchical Lexicon

Hierarchical lexicon structures are not only of great importance for the nonredundant representation of lexical information, they may also contribute to the efficiency of the actual processing of natural language. Two parsing techniques that render the parsing process efficient are presented. Windowing is a technique for incrementally accessing the hierarchical lexicon. Lexical preferencing implements preferences within the parsing process as a natural consequence of the hierarchical structure of the lexicon. Within a proof-theoretic approach to Categorial Grammar it is possible to implement these techniques in a formal and principled way. Special attention is paid to idiomatic expressions.