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 | Exploring Layers and Ripples.
Studying English with Computer Parsing
Alastair Butler
This book presents an unusual grammar and parser of contemporary English: A large subset is parsed unambiguously. Yet the grammar gives multiple parses for sentences native speakers consider ambiguous. Therefore, it is particularly useful for English learners and for teaching English as a second language - and in fact, it has been used this way in the author's courses on English as a Foreign Language. The system scales to essentially all of English, and has been used to parse corpora with thousands of words. The key is having annotations on verbs (and on prepositions and conjunctions in some cases). Such annotation/codes were first proposed in the 1930s in pioneering work by H.E. Palmer and A.S. Hornby specifically for learners of English. This book turns these informal teaching aids into a formal grammar and parser with a reference implementation as a Definite Clause Grammar. This gives a free-standing hands-on experience that takes the reader to a productive understanding about how grammar shapes what is possible with words through layers and ripples.
September 2026
978-1-84890-522-1
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