Session 9: Natural Language Processings

Traditional approaches to interpretation in natural language processing typically fall into one of three classes: syntaxdriven, semantics-driven, or frame/task based. Syntaxdriven approaches use a domain-independent grammar to drive the interpretation process and produce a global parse of the input, accounting for each word of the sentence. Semantics-driven approaches use knowledge about the case frames of the verbs to drive the interpretation process. Early semantic parsers often ignored syntax altogether [1, 2] although more recent systems tend to integrate the two components whether primarily syntax or semantics driven (e.g., [3]). Frame or task based parsers use informarion in the underlying domain to guide the parse. Script based parsers are one example of this class [4]. A more recent example was presented at last year's DARPA Workshop [5]. These systems use the underlying ATIS domain frame that must be built to form a database query to guide the parse, relying on key words and templates to identify information in the sentence that can fill slots of the frame.