Syntactic Pattern Recognition, An Introduction

This book provides an introduction to basic concepts and techniques of syntactic pattern recognition. The presentation emphasizes fundamental and practical material rather than strictly theoretical topics, and numerous examples illustrate the principles. The subject is developed according to the following topics: introduction (background, patterns and pattern classes, approaches to pattern recognition, elements of a pattern recognition system, concluding remarks); elements of formal language theory (introduction; string grammars and languages; examples of pattern languages and grammars; equivalent context-free grammars; syntax-directed translations; deterministic, nondeterministic, and stochastic systems; concluding remarks); higher-dimensional grammars (introduction; tree grammars; web grammars; plex grammars; shape gammars; concluding remarks); recognition and translation of syntactic structures (introduction; string language recognizers; automata for simple syntax-directed translation; parsing in string languages; recognition of imperfect strings; tree automata; concluding remarks); stochastic grammars, languages, and recognizers (introduction; stochastic grammars and languages; consisting of stochastic context-free grammars; stochastic reocgnizers; stochastic syntax-directed translations; modified Cocke-Younger-Kasami parsing algorithm for stochastic errors of changed symbols; concluding remarks); and grammatical inference (introduction; inference of regular grammars; inference of context-free grammars; inference of tree grammars; inference of stochastic grammar; concluding remarks). 155 references, 93 figures, 4 tables. (RWR)