Prediction and Substantiation: A New Approach to Natural Language Processing*

This paper describes a new approach to natural language processing which results in a very robust and efficient system. The approach taken is to integrate the parser with the rest of the system. This enables the parser to benefit from predictions that the rest of the system makes in the course of its processing. These predictions can be invaluable as guides to the parser in such difficult problem areas as resolving referents and selecting meanings of ambiguous words. A program, called FRUMP for Fast Reading Understanding and Memory Program, employs this approach to parsing. FRUMP skims articles rather than reading them for detail. The program works on the relatively unconstrained domain of news articles. It routinely understands stories it has never before seen. The program's success is largely due to its radically different approach to parsing.