Using a symbolic language parser to Improve Markov language models

This thesis presents a hybrid approach to natural language processing that combines an n-gram (Markov) model with a symbolic parser. In concert these two techniques are applied to the problem of sentence simplification. The n-gram system is comprised of a relational database backend with a frontend application that presents a homogeneous interface for both direct n-gram lookup and Markov approximation. The query language exposed by the frontend also applies lexical information from the START natural language system to allow queries based on part of speech. Using the START natural language system's parser, English sentences are transformed into a collection of structural, syntactic, and lexical statements that are uniquely well-suited to the process of simplification. After reducing the parse of the sentence, the resulting expressions can be processed back into English. These reduced sentences are ranked by likelihood by the n-gram model.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Townsend, Duncan Clarke McIntire

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Boris Katz.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100621

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/100621