chickadee » link-grammar » parse-sentence

parse-sentence sentence parse-optionsprocedure

This routine represents the heart of the program. There are several things that are done when a sentence is parsed: 1. Word expressions are extracted from the dictionary and pruned. 2. Disjuncts are built. 3. A series of pruning operations is carried out. 4. The linkages having the minimal number of null links are counted. 5. A 'parse set' of linkages is built. 6. The linkages are post-processed.

The 'parse set' is attached to the sentence, and this is one of the key reasons that the API is flexible and modular. All of the necessary information for building linkages is stored in the parse set. This means that other sentences can be parsed, possibly using different dictionaries and other parameters, without disturbing the information obtained from a call to sentence_parse. If another call to parse-sentence is made on the same sentence, the parsing information for the previous call is deleted. Like almost all of the other routines, this call is thread-safe: that is, sentences can be parsed concurrently in multiple threads.

sentence
parse-options