A Semantic Analyzer for English Sentences
Robert F. Simmons, John F. Burger · Mech. Transl. Comput. Linguistics · 1968
A system for semantic analysis of a wide range of English sentence forms is described. The system has been implemented in LISP 1.5 on the System Development Corporation (SDC) time-shared computer. Semantic analysis is defined as the selection of a unique word sense for each word in a natural-language sentence string and its bracketing in an underlying deep structure of that string. The conclusion is drawn that a semantic analyzer differs from a syntactic analyzer primarily in requiring, in addition to syntactic word-classes, a large set of semantic word-classes. A second conclusion is that the use of semantic event forms eliminates the need for selection restrictions and projection rules as posited by Katz. A discussion is included of the relations of elements of this system to the elements of the Katz theory.