Abstract
Constraint-based grammars based on Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar employ typed feature structures (TFSs) which are often deeply nested. Unification in Prolog (B. Carpenter, G. Penn, ALE: The Attribute Logic Engine User’s Guide, version 2.0, Technical report, Philosophy Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 1994) is then too slow for them to be used in real products. A recent abstract machine (S. Wintner, N. Francez, Efficient compilation of unification-based grammars, in: BCN Summer School 97 on Topics in Constraint-Based Natural Language Processing, Groningen University, 1997, pp. 90–126) translates grammatical descriptions of TFSs into abstract code, with parse times between 3 and 11 times faster, for sentences between 4 and 12 words. We present a new faster method that allocates atomic composite types to TFSs, precompiles tables that replace unification by matching, and represents semantics in a compact skeletal form. A Prolog prototype already parses faster than the existing abstract machine, and would be even faster in an imperative implementation using arrays.
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