Corpora: Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 09:15:15 -1000

Philip (bralich@hawaii.edu)
Fri, 30 Jan 1998 20:15:35 +0100

The Ergo server problem which prevented some of the downloads from
working has been fixed. You may now download the BracketDoctor
without problems. (http://www.ergo-ling.com).

Phil Bralich

>To the readers;
>Derek Bickerton and Phil Bralich of Ergo Linguistics Technology would like
>to announce the release of free software to the Computational Linguistics,
>NLP, MT, and linguistics communities. The software offering is a
>pre-release called "BracketDoctor." It provides a parsed analysis of input
>strings including labeled brackets and trees in the style of the Penn
>Treebank of the Linguistic Data Consortium as outlined in "Bracketing
>Guidelines for Treebank II Style Penn Treebank Project" (Linguistic Data
>Consortium 1995). While the entire range of structures of that work is not
>supported, this is the only parser that can generate any such trees and
>brackets and thus represents a major breakthrough for this field.
>
>We understand that this is unlikely to be nominated for citations or awards,
>but as this is the only software available that can generate such labeled
>brackets and trees, we believe it is an important contribution to this field
>of research and it should be of value to researchers in academia and
>industry alike as well as to students working through their introductory
>syntax text books. We are announcing this release to linguistics
>news-lists, translation lists, and the like as well to our entire mailing
>list of researchers and decision makers in industry, government, and
>academia. We feel this release is particularly important because even the
>major universities such as Stanford and MIT as well as companies such as
>Microsoft, IBM, and Xerox do not have programs that offer this sort of
>demonstration of their ability to work with the Penn Treebank styles.
>
>Of course we recognize the importance of being aware of the entire field of
>NLP and of not misrepresenting such things to government, industry, or
>academia, so we feel it is important to distribute this as widely as
>possible as quickly as possible. As this is the only parser that generates
>Penn Treebank style labeled bracketings and trees, and as NLP, Linguistics,
>and Computational Linguistics communities have agreed that the Penn Treebank
>styles are the standard for this field, we feel compelled to suggest that this
>parser be accepted as the default standard for parsers in the field today
>until such time as other parsers can show that they can do an equal or
>better job with the Penn Treebank style book, or until such time as the Penn
>Treebank styles are removed as the standard. We will also be distributing
>this software to members of the LDC, EAGLES, the organizers of the MUC
>conferences, and other organizations that propose to set standards for NLP.
>(For possible alternative standards for NLP other than the these go to
>http://www.vrml.org/WorkingGroups/NLP-ANIM).
>
>As long as we are the default standard for the generation of trees and
>brackets in the Penn Treebank style, then many publications and proposals
>in NLP will need to mention this software in their review of current
>technologies and work. For that purpose, the reference should refer to
>Philip Bralich and Derek Bickerton, 1998. "BracketDoctor," Ergo Linguistic
>Technologies, Honolulu, Hawaii.
>
>The BracketDoctor can be obtained by writing to Derek Bickerton
>(derek@hawaii.edu) or Phil Bralich (bralich@hawaii.edu) or it can be downloaded
>from our web site. It is a standard Windows 95 program in a setup file. It
>requires 1000 kilobytes of space and less than one megabyte of ram to run.
>Sentences parse in real time.
>
>Phil Bralich
>
>P.S. For those who can sign a non-disclosure agreement it is also possible
>to receive the product called "MemoMaster" which demonstrates our abilities
>with: 1) question/answer, statement/response repartee (using notes and
>reminders), 2) NLP messaging for sending faxes, email, and memos, and 3)
>command and control for browsers and operating systems (a great add- on for
>any speech rec system). Just email me or a send a fax to (808)539-3924
>requesting the non-disclosure.
Philip A. Bralich, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Ergo Linguistic Technologies
2800 Woodlawn Drive, Suite 175
Honolulu, HI 96822

Tel: (808)539-3920
Fax: (808)5393924