Viewing Word Expert Parsing as Linguistic Theory

Abstract

The Word Expert Parser is a computer program that analyzes fragments of natural language text in order to extract their meaning in context. The construction of the program has led to the development of a linguistic theor y ba s ed on noti ons orthogonal to those traditionally found at the heart of such theories. Word Expert Parsing explains the understanding of textual fragments containing highly idiosyncratic elements, such as idioms, collocations, cliches, and colligations, as well as lexical sequences that contain interesting structural phenomena. The theory perceives the individual word of language as the organizing unit for linguistic knowledge, and views understanding as consisting of lexical interactions among procedural word experts. This paper describes four classes of lexical interaction required to explain the understanding of sentences in context, idiosyncratic interact ion, 1 inguist ic interact ion, discourse interact ion, and 1ogica 1 interact ion. The paper purposely avoids programming details in order to focus on Word Expert Parsing as linguistic theory.