Parsing String Generating Hypergraph Grammars

A string generating hypergraph grammar is a hyperedge replacement grammar where the resulting language consists of string graphs i.e. hypergraphs modeling strings. With the help of these grammars, string languages like a n b n c n can be modeled that can not be generated by context-free grammars for strings. They are well suited to model discontinuous constituents in natural languages, i.e. constituents that are interrupted by other constituents. For parsing context-free Chomsky grammars, the Earley parser is well known. In this paper, an Earley parser for string generating hypergraph grammars is presented, leading to a parser for natural languages that is able to handle discontinuities