The Syntax And Semantics Of User-Defined Modifiers In Transportable Natural Language Processor

The Layered Domain Class system (LDC) is an experimental natural language processor being developed at Duke University which reached the prototype stage in May of 1983. Its primary goals are (1) to provide English-language retrieval capabilities for structured but unnormalized data files created by the user; (2) to allow very complex semantics, in terms of the information directly available from the physical data file; and (3) to enable users to customize the system to operate with new types of data. In this paper we shall discuss (a) the types of modifiers LDC provides for; (b) how information about the syntax and semantics of modifiers is obtained from users; and (c) how this information is used to process English inputs.

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