A Structure Editor for the English Language

Abstract

We present a trial implementation of a structure editor for the English language. That might be the first attempt of applying the idea of structure editors, which have been quite common for the programming languages, to a natural language. This structure editor forces the writer to construct a derivation tree manually by selecting an admissible derivation rule after another and by filling a leaf node with a word. Each word is checked with a dictionary API if a (pro)noun is properly in the single or plural form, if a verb is properly inflected accordingly, and if other components such as adjective, adverb, preposition are placed at the right leaves. Then the writer gets a grammatically correct sentence together with its derivation tree. This kind of editor may be useful in writing technical documents like operating manuals that should be prepared in different natural languages because a sentence accompanied by its derivation tree may be more easily translated into other languages than a freely written sentence with its possibly wrong parse tree. At the moment, the implemented editor covers only a limited class of simple affirmative sentences.