13-Feb-01 14:45 Hans Aberg wrote: > Otherwise, I stated the general principle, the better the parsing becomes, > the less markup will be needed (or the more sophisticated it can be). The question is "can markup be avoided completely?" I bet no. > As for that natural language parsing problem, one problem is that humans, > using their massively parallel supercomputers, can scan a sentence and try > many different patterns. Let's try parsing the Frank Mittelbach example: > The a in the formula is a variable. > You would probably use the context knowledge that it is composed of > English > and Math and scan it to recognize that the second "a", but not the first, > is a indefinite article. Then from that, you would infer that the first > "a" > must be a math symbol, which is supported by the semantic information of > the wording "in the formula". As for a math environment, how will you parse (without math markup) the last sentence in the following example: ($G$ acts on a manifold $M$. $G_1,G_2,A$ --- subgroups of $G$. $X$ --- a submanifold of $M$. $a \in A, p \in X$.) $$ L = \{ ga \cdot p \mid \mskip10mu p \in X \} $$ $$ M = \{ g \cdot ap \mid \mskip15mu g \in G_1, p \in X \} $$ $$ N = \{ gap \mid \mskip20mu g \in G_2 \} $$ Editor writes: The gap in the last formula [i.e. \mskip20mu] should be made like in the first one and the $gap$ should be made like in the second one. The following example is not that serious :-) (and, in fact, I'ld write $\mathfrak{so}$ instead of $so$): This Lie algebra is $so_n(\mathbb C)$. Let's see why it is so [or $so$?]. Somebody with better English (and maybe with experience in other fields of math) will find better examples, I think. Sasha