I thought I’d check out a few sentences to see how the parsers cope with
real, but not too awkward, sentences (as one might expect, the parsers
copes fine with sentences such as “Time flies like an arrow” !!)
I mentioned a while ago that Id been looking at speech recognition
technology – my specific aim here was to see how the technology might be
used with ESL students. (In short, I don’t think it yet can, but that’s
another story.)
In a small study with 10 very fluent ESL students, I’ve been getting
subjects to read 1,000 words of Arthur C.Clarke’s 2001 into Dragon
Naturally Speaking and then analysing the output. So I thought a few
sentences from this source might be worth trying with the Ego parser. Ive
been using the English Sentence Enhancer, which we’ve been informed by Dr
Bralich, is for ESL students. The parsing algorithms will, I imagine, be
similar to the other tools in the suite.
First a couple of sentences from the original – fairly short ones.
(1) But now Texas was invisible, and even the United States was hard to see.
(2) Probably no one would ever know this; it did not matter.
For both (1) and (2), ESE threw up the analysis:
“This sentence is ungrammatical.”
Would Arthur C Clarke agree on this? Many (less best?) grammarians, I
suspect, would not.
The ESE program did manage to analyse the following sentence:
(3) It was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range
antenna, and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon
its distant target.
I include the output (it is a bit lengthy, so readers might like to skip to
the end where Ive extracted a few points):
Undefined or Misspelled words:
gunsight
Parts of Speech
"It" is a pronoun
"was" is a verb
"mounted" is an adjective
"like" is a preposition
"a" is an indefinite article
"gunsight" is a noun
"on" is a preposition
"the" is a definite article
"rim" is a noun
"of" is a preposition
"the" is a definite article
"ship's" is a noun
"long-range" is a noun
"antenna" is a noun
"and" is a coordinate conjunction
"checked" is a verb
"that" is a complementizer
"the" is a definite article
"great" is an adjective
"parabolic" is an adjective
"bowl" is a noun
"was" is a verb
"rigidly" is an adverb
"locked" is an adjective
"upon" is a preposition
"its" is a pronoun
"distant" is an adjective
"target" is a noun
Parts of Sentence
"It" is the subject of the verb "was checked"
"mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range antenna" is
the complement of the verb "was checked"
"a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range antenna" is object of the
preposition "like"
"the rim of the ship's long-range antenna" is object of the preposition "on"
"the ship's long-range antenna" is object of the preposition "of"
"that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon its distant target"
is a direct object of the verb "was checked"
"the great parabolic bowl" is the subject of the verb "was"
"rigidly locked" is the complement of the verb "was"
"its distant target" is object of the preposition "upon"
Sentence Type
This is a statement.
Tense and Voice
Active Simple Past
Simple/Compound/Complex
This sentence is simple.
Statement to Question
Y/N Question
was It mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range antenna
and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon its
distant target
WH Question
What was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range
antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon
its distant target
What was It mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range
antenna and checked
Question to Statement
Question to Statement not necessary
Active to Passive
Active to Passive not possible.
Change Tense
Simple Past - It was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's
long-range antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly
locked upon its distant target
Simple Present - It is mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's
long-range antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly
locked upon its distant target
Simple Future - It will be mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's
long-range antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly
locked upon its distant target
Present Modal - It could be mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
Past Progressive - It was was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and checking that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
Present Progressive - It is was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and checking that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
Future Progressive - It will be mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and be checking that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
Progressive Modal - It could be mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and be checking that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
Past Perfect - It had was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's
long-range antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly
locked upon its distant target
Present Perfect - It has was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and checked that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
Future Perfect - It will be mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and have checked that the great parabolic bowl
was rigidly locked upon its distant target
Perfective Modal - It could be mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and have checked that the great parabolic bowl
was rigidly locked upon its distant target
Past Perfect Progressive - It had was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of
the ship's long-range antenna and been checking that the great parabolic
bowl was rigidly locked upon its distant target
Present Perfect Progressive - It has was mounted like a gunsight on the rim
of the ship's long-range antenna and been checking that the great parabolic
bowl was rigidly locked upon its distant target
Future Perfect Progressive - It will be mounted like a gunsight on the rim
of the ship's long-range antenna and have been checking that the great
parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon its distant target
Present Perfective Modal - It could be mounted like a gunsight on the rim
of the ship's long-range antenna and have been checking that the great
parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon its distant target
Extracts
(The complete sentence was:
(3) It was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range
antenna, and checked that the great parabolic bowl was rigidly locked upon
its distant target.)
A few brief comments.
(4) "mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the ship's long-range antenna"
is the complement of the verb "was checked"
- hmm.
(5) Simple/Compound/Complex
This sentence is simple.
- In certain theories (more best?) of syntax, perhaps.
(6) Past Progressive - It was was mounted like a gunsight on the rim of the
ship's long-range antenna and checking that the great parabolic bowl was
rigidly locked upon its distant target
- This brings us to the question of nonsensical overgeneration problems
that were mentioned not so long ago by Bill Manaris (3 Feb), and which Ego
denied.
I finally chose a few of the sentences produced by Dragon Naturally
Speaking from one the ESL subjects. One of these sentences was :
(7) It is mounted like guns liked on the remote ships long-range antenna,
and checked the repair voted all was rigidly locked upon this distant targets.
When passed through to ESE for analysis, (7) nor any other of the 10
subjects’ outputs for this sentence were able to be analysed. All that was
returned was the message:
“This sentence is ungrammatical”.
This is true, of course, but as a tool for ESL students, I wouldn’t have
thought it represented billion-dollar potential.
David Coniam
Chinese University of Hong Kong