A syntactic formula for English sentences: Application to scientific narrative
✍ Scribed by Irwin D.J. Bross
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1968
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 932 KB
- Volume
- 1
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0010-4809
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A constructive formula for the syntactic structure of English sentences used in scientific narrative reports has been developed and tested. The formula was derived from the automaton of Zellig Harris. Starting with an input vector, X of the form classes of the words in the sentence and using the "multiplication tables" given in the text for X/X' = S,, Y/Y' = S,, and Z//Z' = S,, a syntactic structure matrix S = S, i-S, + S, and a residual vector, R, are obtained as output. For a wellformed sentence there is at least one residual vector R = 0 and a corresponding matrix S which gives a syntactic structure for the sentence. Sentences from surgical operative reports were independently analysed by a linguist and by a computer program based on the constructive formula. The two analyses corresponded in 96% of the syntactic connections.