Grammar Checkers for Natural Languages: a Review

Natural Language processing is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistic and computer science studied under the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that gave birth to an allied area called ‘Computational Linguistics’ which focuses on processing of natural languages on computational devices. A natural language consists of many sentences which are meaningful linguistic units involving one or more words linked together in accordance with a set of predefined rules called ‘grammar’. Grammar checking is fundamental task in the formal world that validates sentences syntactically as well as semantically. Grammar Checker tool is a prominent tool within language engineering. Our review draws on the till date development of various Natural Language grammar checkers to look at past, present and the future in the present context. Our review covers common grammatical errors , overview of grammar checking process, grammar checkers of various languages with the aim of seeking their approaches, methodologies and performance evaluation, which would be great help for developing new tool and system as a whole. The survey concludes with the discussion of different features included in existing grammar checkers of foreign languages as well as a few Indian Languages.