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The Computer Journal 1986 29(5):460-466; doi:10.1093/comjnl/29.5.460
© 1986 by British Computer Society
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DSA – A Tool for Descriptive Text Analysis

A. Blair * and I. Sommerville *

Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XH, UK

This paper describes a tool for descriptive text processing which can, after tuition by the user, split entity descriptions into their constituent parts and associate a meaning with each of these parts. The program, in essence, is a form of parser generator where the class of texts which may be parsed are those descriptions which are set out in a semi-structured way. Examples of such descriptions are catalogue entries in an electronic components catalogue, descriptions of flora in a handbook of wild flowers and descriptions of drugs in a formulary.

Our system is novel in that the user need not analyse the structure of descriptions in advance and then describe that structure in a formal way. Rather, DSA (Description Structure Analyser) dynamically ‘learns’ the structure of descriptions by interacting with the user, who tells DSA what each part of a typical description means. The description model built by DSA is then refined by seeking user advice whenever an unfamiliar description occurs. The system is not restricted to the processing of rigidly structured descriptions. It can create a parser to analyse descriptions which have a variable structure and can even tackle simple sentences of natural language.

Received July 1984.

* Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XH


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