---
title: "Controlling Search in Flexible Parsing"
authors:
  - "Steven Minton"
  - "Philip J. Hayes"
  - "Jill Fain"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/154"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/0154.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1985
pages: "785-786"
track: "Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# Controlling Search in Flexible Parsing

Steven Minton, Philip J. Hayes, Jill Fain

*Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 785-786.

## Abstract

Most natural language parsers require their input to be gra rnm atical. This significantly constrains the search space that they must explore during parsing . Parse rs which attempt to recover from extragrammatical input cante nd with a search space that is potenti ally much !arger, since they cannot necessarily prune branches when grammatical expectations are violated. ln this pap er we discuss the control structure of the experimental MULTIPAR parser, which directs its se arch by exploring potential pars es in ord er of their degree of grammatical deviation .