---
title: "Integration, Unification, Reconstruction, Modification: An Eternal Parsing Braid"
authors:
  - "Michael C. Dyer"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/8"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1981/0008.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1981
pages: "37-41"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Integration, Unification, Reconstruction, Modification: An Eternal Parsing Braid

Michael C. Dyer

*Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 37-41.

## Abstract

BORIS is an integrated natural language understanding system for narratives . In an integrated system, processes of event assimilation. inference. and episodic memory search occur on a word-by-word basis as parsing proceeds. "Parsing" here refers to the task of building a conceptual representation for each natural language expression . In addition to being integrated, the BORIS parser is also a unified parser. The same parser is used both at s tory understanding time and question answering time. This paper explores some of the consequences which arise when the same parser serves both tasks. For instance, one such consequence is that BORIS often knows the answer to a question before tt has completely understood the question .