---
title: "Book Reviews — paper by Briscoe (1993) — summary and ideas"
description: "This is Ted Briscoe's review of Nelleke Oostdijk's 1991 book on the Nijmegen TOSCA project, where a formal generative… 13 references."
authors: ["Ted Briscoe"]
year: 1993
venue: "Computational Linguistics"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/J93-1014/"
licence: "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/briscoe-1993-book-reviews-corpus-linguistics-automatic/"
---
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# Book Reviews: Corpus Linguistics and the Automatic Analysis of English

**Authors:** [Ted Briscoe](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/ted-briscoe/) · **Year:** 1993 · **Venue:** [Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/cl/) ([Computational Linguistics 1993](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/cl/1993/)) · **Publisher:** [The MIT Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/the-mit-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (ACL Anthology, before 2016)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/J93-1014/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/J93-1014.pdf) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1499632330)

**Citations:** 56 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
This is Ted Briscoe's review of Nelleke Oostdijk's 1991 book on the Nijmegen TOSCA project, where a formal generative grammar was built to analyze a balanced one million-word corpus of written English. Briscoe focuses on how the grammar was developed and how the parser performs. The grammar uses an extended affix grammar formalism. Its analyses are constituency-based, and the category labels are enriched with grammatical-function information. It covers hard constructions such as gapping, nonconstituent coordination, apposition and partitives. Each input is first given unambiguous, fine-grained lexical categories, and an analyst then interactively selects the correct parse.

Briscoe praises the coverage and the empirical, data-driven method. He also criticizes several things:
- The book does not compare TOSCA with other broad-coverage grammars or formalisms.
- It assumes that rule-based and statistical methods cannot be combined.
- Linguistically real ambiguity was removed from the grammar to keep parsing tractable.
- Some odd analyses chosen to fit corpus examples are then propagated through the whole annotated corpus.

The review matters because it sets out the trade-offs of corpus-driven grammar engineering.

## Key points
- The TOSCA project at Nijmegen, led by Jan Aarts, had done corpus analysis for nearly two decades. The book documents a grammar for a one million-word written English corpus.
- The formalism is extended affix grammar (Koster 1971). Briscoe judges it roughly comparable in power to PATR-II or ANLT, with useful extensions for agreement in coordinate structures.
- A separate step assigns unambiguous lexical categories that encode subcategorization. These are finer-grained than CLAWS2 tags. Parsing then runs over that category sequence.
- Parse selection is manual and interactive, but the analyst can only pick among analyses the grammar licenses. Even so, the parser cannot always compute every analysis.
- One criticized design choice: noun phrase complements of ditransitive verbs are grouped into a single constituent so that gapped sentences can be handled.

## Interesting ideas
- Limit human annotation to choosing among analyses the grammar already licenses, rather than letting annotators invent new structures, so the database stays consistent and correction stays fast.
- If every sentence must get some analysis, a bad local decision can become fixed and spread across the whole annotated corpus.
- Removing genuine ambiguity, such as fixing coordination attachment at specific nodes, for the sake of efficiency hides real differences in semantic scope.
- Run a separate pre-parsing stage that fixes rich lexical categories, including subcategorization, so the parser works over an unambiguous and informative sequence.
- Rule-based grammars and statistical methods work well together, for example by using probabilities to rank the parses a grammar licenses.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (learn): LLM teacher tiers and human reviewers could be asked only to pick among candidate trees proposed by the witness parsers, which keeps silver data consistent and makes the choices auditable.
- **I2** (learn): self-induced repair rules and treebank-wide conversions should be checked against negative controls, so that one questionable rule is not silently propagated into all training data.
- **I3** (tree): when coordination attachment is uncertain, the parser should keep alternative attachments or flag them, so downstream stages can resolve scope instead of inheriting an arbitrary choice.
- **I4** (tokens): the tagger could output subcategorization or valency hints, for example from VerbNet classes, alongside POS tags, which would narrow the parser's search and explain later attachments.
- **I5** (tree): explicit, explainable rule constraints could filter candidates while the perceptron or gparse scores rank what remains, combining transparency with robustness.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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## Cite

Cite as: Ted Briscoe. 1993. Book Reviews: Corpus Linguistics and the Automatic Analysis of English. Computational Linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{briscoe1993book,
  title = {{Book Reviews: Corpus Linguistics and the Automatic Analysis of English}},
  author = {Ted Briscoe},
  journal = {Computational Linguistics},
  year = {1993},
  doi = {10.1163/9789004653511},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004653511}
}
```

- [← previous NPtool, a Detector of English Noun Phrases](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/voutilainen-1993-nptool-detector-english-noun-phrases/)
- [next → Parsing Some Constrained Grammar Formalisms](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/shanker-1993-parsing-some-constrained-grammar-formalisms/)
- [↑ back to papers of 1993](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/1993/)

## References

13 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Black, Ezra; Lafferty, John; and Roukos, Salim (1992). "Development and evaluation of a broad-coverage probabilistic grammar of English-language computer manuals." Proceedings, 30th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Newark, DE, 185-192. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Black%2C+Ezra%3B+Lafferty%2C+John%3B+and+Roukos%2C+Salim+%281992%29%2E+%22Development+and+evaluation+of+a+broad%2Dcoverage+probabilistic+grammar+of+English%2Dlanguage+computer+manuals%2E%22+Proceedings%2C+30th+Annual+Meeting+of+)
2. Briscoe, Ted; Grover, Claire; Boguraev, Bran; and Carroll, John (1987)• "A formalism and environment for the development of a large grammar of English." Proceedings, l Oth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Milan, 703-708. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Briscoe%2C+Ted%3B+Grover%2C+Claire%3B+Boguraev%2C+Bran%3B+and+Carroll%2C+John+%281987%29%E2%80%A2+%22A+formalism+and+environment+for+the+development+of+a+large+grammar+of+English%2E%22+Proceedings%2C+l+Oth+International+Joint+Conferen)
3. De Marcken, Carl G. (1990). "Parsing the LOB Corpus." Proceedings, 28th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Pittsburgh, 243-251. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=De+Marcken%2C+Carl+G%2E+%281990%29%2E+%22Parsing+the+LOB+Corpus%2E%22+Proceedings%2C+28th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%2C+Pittsburgh%2C+243%2D251%2E)
4. Garside, Roger; Leech, Geoffrey; and Sampson, Geoffrey (1987)• The Computational Analysis of English: A Corpus-Based Approach• Longman. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Garside%2C+Roger%3B+Leech%2C+Geoffrey%3B+and+Sampson%2C+Geoffrey+%281987%29%E2%80%A2+The+Computational+Analysis+of+English%3A+A+Corpus%2DBased+Approach%E2%80%A2+Longman%2E)
5. Grover, Claire; Briscoe, Ted; Carroll, John; and Boguraev, Bran (1989). "The Alvey natural language tools grammar (second release)." Technical Report 162, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory• Hindle, Donald (1983). "User manual for Fidditch, a deterministic parser•" Technical Memorandum 7590-142, Naval Research Laboratory. Volume 19, Number 1 [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Grover%2C+Claire%3B+Briscoe%2C+Ted%3B+Carroll%2C+John%3B+and+Boguraev%2C+Bran+%281989%29%2E+%22The+Alvey+natural+language+tools+grammar+%28second+release%29%2E%22+Technical+Report+162%2C+University+of+Cambridge%2C+Computer+Laboratory%E2%80%A2)
6. Hindle, Donald (1993). "A parser for text corpora." In Computational Approaches to the Lexicon, edited by B. T. S. Atkins and A. Zampolli, Oxford University Press. In press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hindle%2C+Donald+%281993%29%2E+%22A+parser+for+text+corpora%2E%22+In+Computational+Approaches+to+the+Lexicon%2C+edited+by+B%2E+T%2E+S%2E+Atkins+and+A%2E+Zampolli%2C+Oxford+University+Press%2E+In+press%2E)
7. Jensen, Karen; Heidorn, George; Richardson, Stephen; and Haas, Norman (1986). "PLNLP, PEG and CRITIQUE: Three contributions to computing in the humanities." Report RC-11841, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jensen%2C+Karen%3B+Heidorn%2C+George%3B+Richardson%2C+Stephen%3B+and+Haas%2C+Norman+%281986%29%2E+%22PLNLP%2C+PEG+and+CRITIQUE%3A+Three+contributions+to+computing+in+the+humanities%2E%22+Report+RC%2D11841%2C+IBM+Thomas+J%2E+Watson+Resea)
8. Koster, C. (1971). "Affix grammars." In ALGOL 68 Implementation, edited by John Peck, North-Holland. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Koster%2C+C%2E+%281971%29%2E+%22Affix+grammars%2E%22+In+ALGOL+68+Implementation%2C+edited+by+John+Peck%2C+North%2DHolland%2E)
9. Leech, Geoffrey, and Garside, Roger (1991). "Running a grammar factory: The production of syntactically analysed corpora or 'treebanks'." In English Computer Corpora: Selected Papers and Bibliography, edited by Stig Johansson and A. Stenstrom, Mouton de Gruyter. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110865967.15)
10. Marcus, Mitchell P. (1980). A Theory of Syntactic Recognition for Natural Language. The MIT Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Marcus%2C+Mitchell+P%2E+%281980%29%2E+A+Theory+of+Syntactic+Recognition+for+Natural+Language%2E+The+MIT+Press%2E)
11. Robinson, Joan (1982). "DIAGRAM: A grammar for dialogues." Communications of the ACM. 25(1), 27-47. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Robinson%2C+Joan+%281982%29%2E+%22DIAGRAM%3A+A+grammar+for+dialogues%2E%22+Communications+of+the+ACM%2E+25%281%29%2C+27%2D47%2E)
12. Sager, Naomi (1981). Natural Language Information Processing: A Computer Grammar of English and Its Applications. Addison-Wesley. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Sager%2C+Naomi+%281981%29%2E+Natural+Language+Information+Processing%3A+A+Computer+Grammar+of+English+and+Its+Applications%2E+Addison%2DWesley%2E)
13. Shieber, Stuart (1986). Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Ted Briscoe is a SERC Advanced Research Fellow at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. His current research interests include robust parsing of naturally occurring natural language. His address is: Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB1 3AZ, UK; e-maih ejb@cl.cam.ac.uk Book Reviews Steedman, Mark (1985). "Dependency and coordination in the grammar of Dutch and English." Language, 62, 523-568. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Shieber%2C+Stuart+%281986%29%2E+Introduction+to+Unification%2DBased+Approaches+to+Grammar%2E+Stanford%2C+CA%3A+Center+for+the+Study+of+Language+and+Information%2E+Ted+Briscoe+is+a+SERC+Advanced+Research+Fellow+at+the+C)

*Updated 1 November 2026*