Parser Generator?

[Jack]

Hi all, I need to do syntax parsing of simple naturual languages,
for example, "weather of London" or "what is the time", simple
things like these, with Unicode support in the syntax.

In Java, there are JavaCC, Antlr, etc. I wonder what people use
in Python? Antlr also has Python support but I'm not sure how good
it is. Comments/hints are welcome.

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Jack schrieb:

Hi all, I need to do syntax parsing of simple naturual languages,
for example, "weather of London" or "what is the time", simple
things like these, with Unicode support in the syntax.

In Java, there are JavaCC, Antlr, etc. I wonder what people use
in Python? Antlr also has Python support but I'm not sure how good
it is. Comments/hints are welcome.

There are several options. I personally like spark.py, the most common
answer is pyparsing, and don't forget to check out NLTK, the natural
language toolkit.

Diez

[beginner]

On Aug 18, 5:22 pm, "Jack" <nos...@invalid .comwrote:

Hi all, I need to do syntax parsing of simple naturual languages,
for example, "weather of London" or "what is the time", simple
things like these, with Unicode support in the syntax.

In Java, there are JavaCC, Antlr, etc. I wonder what people use
in Python? Antlr also has Python support but I'm not sure how good
it is. Comments/hints are welcome.

Antlr seems to be able to generate python code, too.

[Tommy Nordgren]

On 19 aug 2007, at 00.22, Jack wrote:

Hi all, I need to do syntax parsing of simple naturual languages,
for example, "weather of London" or "what is the time", simple
things like these, with Unicode support in the syntax.

In Java, there are JavaCC, Antlr, etc. I wonder what people use
in Python? Antlr also has Python support but I'm not sure how good
it is. Comments/hints are welcome.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

Antlr can generate Python code.
However, I don't think a parser generator is suitable for generating
natural language parsers.
They are intended to generate code for computer language parsers.
However, for examples on parsing imperative English sentences, I
suggest taking a look
at the class library for TADS 3 (Text Adventure Development System)
<http://www.tads.org>
The lanuge has a syntax reminding of c++ and Java.
-----------------------------------------------------
An astronomer to a colleague:
-I can't understsnad how you can go to the brothel as often as you
do. Not only is it a filthy habit, but it must cost a lot of money too.
-Thats no problem. I've got a big government grant for the study of
black holes.
Tommy Nordgren
to************@ comhem.se

[Jack]

Thanks for all the replies!

SPARK looks promising. Its doc doesn't say if it handles unicode
(CJK in particular) encoding though.

Yapps also looks powerful: http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/yapps/

There's also PyGgy http://lava.net/~newsham/pyggy/

I may also give Antlr a try.

If anyone has experiences using any of the parser generators with CJK
languages, I'd be very interested in hearing that.

Jack
"Jack" <no****@invalid .comwrote in message
news:ab******** *************** *******@comcast .com...

Hi all, I need to do syntax parsing of simple naturual languages,
for example, "weather of London" or "what is the time", simple
things like these, with Unicode support in the syntax.

In Java, there are JavaCC, Antlr, etc. I wonder what people use
in Python? Antlr also has Python support but I'm not sure how good
it is. Comments/hints are welcome.

[samwyse]

Jack wrote:

Thanks for all the replies!

SPARK looks promising. Its doc doesn't say if it handles unicode
(CJK in particular) encoding though.

Yapps also looks powerful: http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/yapps/

There's also PyGgy http://lava.net/~newsham/pyggy/

I may also give Antlr a try.

If anyone has experiences using any of the parser generators with CJK
languages, I'd be very interested in hearing that.

I'm going to echo Tommy's reply. If you want to parse natural language,
conventional parsers are going to be worse than useless (because you'll
keep thinking, "Just one more tweak and this time it'll work for
sure!"). Instead, go look at what the interactive fiction community
uses. They analyse the statement in multiple passes, first picking out
the verbs, then the noun phrases. Some of their parsers can do
on-the-fly domain-specific spelling correction, etc, and all of them can
ask the user for clarification. (I'm currently cobbling together
something similar for pre-teen users.)

[Jack]

Thanks for the suggestion. I understand that more work is needed for natural
language
understanding. What I want to do is actually very simple - I pre-screen the
user
typed text. If it's a simple syntax my code understands, like, Weather in
London, I'll
redirect it to a weather site. Or, if it's "What is ... " I'll probably
redirect it to wikipedia.
Otherwise, I'll throw it to a search engine. So, extremelyl simple stuff ...

"samwyse" <de******@email .comwrote in message
news:xH******** ********@nlpi06 8.nbdc.sbc.com. ..

Jack wrote:

>Thanks for all the replies!

SPARK looks promising. Its doc doesn't say if it handles unicode
(CJK in particular) encoding though.

Yapps also looks powerful: http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/yapps/

There's also PyGgy http://lava.net/~newsham/pyggy/

I may also give Antlr a try.

If anyone has experiences using any of the parser generators with CJK
languages, I'd be very interested in hearing that.

I'm going to echo Tommy's reply. If you want to parse natural language,
conventional parsers are going to be worse than useless (because you'll
keep thinking, "Just one more tweak and this time it'll work for sure!").
Instead, go look at what the interactive fiction community uses. They
analyse the statement in multiple passes, first picking out the verbs,
then the noun phrases. Some of their parsers can do on-the-fly
domain-specific spelling correction, etc, and all of them can ask the user
for clarification. (I'm currently cobbling together something similar for
pre-teen users.)

[Alex Martelli]

Jack <no****@invalid .comwrote:

Thanks for the suggestion. I understand that more work is needed for natural
language
understanding. What I want to do is actually very simple - I pre-screen the
user
typed text. If it's a simple syntax my code understands, like, Weather in
London, I'll
redirect it to a weather site. Or, if it's "What is ... " I'll probably
redirect it to wikipedia.
Otherwise, I'll throw it to a search engine. So, extremelyl simple stuff ...

<http://nltk.sourceforg e.net/index.php/Main_Page>

"""
NLTK — the Natural Language Toolkit — is a suite of open source Python
modules, data sets and tutorials supporting research and development in
natural language processing.
"""
Alex

[Jack]

Very interesting work. Thanks for the link!

"Alex Martelli" <al***@mac.comw rote in message
news:1i******** *************** ***@mac.com...

<http://nltk.sourceforg e.net/index.php/Main_Page>

"""
NLTK ¡ª the Natural Language Toolkit ¡ª is a suite of open source Python
modules, data sets and tutorials supporting research and development in
natural language processing.
"""
Alex

[Jason Evans]

On Aug 18, 3:22 pm, "Jack" <nos...@invalid .comwrote:

Hi all, I need to do syntax parsing of simple naturual languages,
for example, "weather of London" or "what is the time", simple
things like these, with Unicode support in the syntax.

In Java, there are JavaCC, Antlr, etc. I wonder what people use
in Python? Antlr also has Python support but I'm not sure how good
it is. Comments/hints are welcome.

I use Parsing.py. I like it a lot, probably because I wrote it.

http://www.canonware.com/Parsing/

Jason