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<Paper uid="C94-1069">
  <Title>EXPLORING TIlE ROLE OF PUNCq'UATION IN PARSING NATURAl, TEXT</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
INTRODUCTION
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> qT'here are no cnrrent text I)ased natural language analysis or generation systems that make flfll use of punctuation, and while there are some that make limited use, like the \],klitor's Assistant \[l)ale 1990\], they tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Instead, punctuation is usually stripped out of the text belbre l)rocessing, and is not included in generated text.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Intnitively, this seems very wrong. Punctuation is such an integral part of written language that it. is difficult to imagine natnrally producing any significant body of unpunctuated text, or being al)le to easily understand any such body of text.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> IIowever, this is what has been done in the computational linguistics field. The reason that it has always been too difficult to incorporate any coherent account of punctuation into any system is because no such coherent account exists.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> I)unctuation has long been considered to be intimately related to intonation: that is that difDrent punctuation lnarks simply give the reader tiles :_ts to the possible prosodic and l)ausal characteristics of the text \[Markwardt, t942\]. This claim is questioned by Nunberg \[1990\], since such a transcriptional view of punctuation is theoretically nninteresting, and also correlates rather lradly with intonation in any case.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> However, even if we reeognise that punctuation fulfils a linguistic role of its own, it is by no means clear how this role is defined. Since there is still no concise linguistic aeconnt of the flmction of pllltCtUation, we have to rely mainly on personal intuitions. This in turn introduces new probhmas, since there is a great deal of idiosyncrasy associated with the use of Imnctuation marks. Whilst most people may agree on (:ore situations in which use of a given punctuation mark is desirable, or ewm necessary, there are still tnany situations where their nse is less clear.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> In his recent review, lhurlphreys \[1993\] suggests Llmt acconnts O\['lnmctuation fall into three categories: '&amp;quot;I'he first ...is selllessly dedicated to the task of bringing Punctuation to the Peasantry ,.. The second sort is the Style (I uide, written by editors and printers for tile private pleasure of fellow professionals ...The third, on tile linguistics ranch the rarest of all.&amp;quot; Thus whilst we do lmblishers ' style guides, of the punctuation systenr, is not really want to rely on since the accounts of i)unctuation they contain are rather too proscriptive and concentrate on tile nse of punctuation rather than its ine~.tnillg, tim academic accounts of l)nnetnation are far from numerous. In the work of Dale \[1991\], the potential o1' punctuation in the tiehl of discourse and natnral hmguage generation is explored. However, little mention is made anywhere of tile role of lmnctuation within a syntactic framework. 'PSherefore the current investigation tries to determine whether taldng consideration of lmnetuation can further the goals of syntactic analysis of natural language.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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