On context and ambiguity in parsing

This note is by way of commentary on the notions of “bounded context” of Floyd [1] and “structural connections” of Irons [2], as these notions relate to as yet unpublished researches growing out of the development of the author's Algorithmic Theory of Language [3, 4]. In the closing paragraphs of [3], the author made comments concerning further developments of the theory which would include “context dependence” and “resolution of apparent syntactic ambiguities.” The work on parsing reported here was carried out in early September, 1962 (an earlier version in March, 1962), but has not been polished or reduced to final form because, for the purpose of the total theory, parsing should not be considered separately, and the complexities of the proper treatment of the “precedence string” (which relates to semantic structure as distinct from syntactic structure of parsing) have not yet been satisfactorily resolved.

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