A theory of syntactic recognition for natural language.

"A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural Language" makes use of the hypothesis that the syntax of any natural language can be parsed by a mechanism which operates "strictly deterministically" in that it does not simulate a nondeterministic machine. Basing his research strictly on English, Marcus sets forth some principles of processing that interact to offer explanations for some fundamental properties of language. He shows that language should have a certain design in order to be efficiently processed by the system he has constructed; specifically, rules should have certain locality properties, left-right asymmetries, and hierarchic structures that enter into rule types in special ways.Included in this volume are sections on the Determinism Hypothesis, Historical Perspective, the Grammar Interpreter, Structure of Grammar, Capturing Linguistic Generalizations, The Grammar Interpreter and Chomsky's Constraints, Parsing Relative Clauses, Parsing Noun Phrases, Differential Diagnosis and Garden Path Sentences, and the Necessity of Some Semantic/Syntactic Interactions.