1. A method of parsing a sentence into a sequence of phrasal segments, the method being performed by a computer processor, the method comprising the steps of: (a) providing a target segment length expressed as a number of words or syllables; (b) parsing, by the computer processor, the sentence to identify a plurality of candidate break points based on punctuation and parts of speech and including candidate break points at the beginning and end of the sentence; and (c) eliminating, by the computer processor, some of the candidate break points, leaving a plurality of final break points, so that every word in the sentence is situated between two final break points, and the sum of the differences between (i) the target segment length and (ii) the number of words, if the target segment length is expressed as a number of words, or the number of syllables, if the target segment length is expressed as a number of syllables, between each consecutive pair of final break points is minimal; wherein each sequence of words situated between each consecutive pair of final break points is identified as a segment.
1. A method of parsing a sentence into a sequence of phrasal segments, the method being performed by a computer processor, the method comprising the steps of: (a) providing a target segment length expressed as a number of words or syllables; (b) parsing, by the computer processor, the sentence to identify a plurality of candidate break points based on punctuation and parts of speech and including candidate break points at the beginning and end of the sentence; and (c) eliminating, by the computer processor, some of the candidate break points, leaving a plurality of final break points, so that every word in the sentence is situated between two final break points, and the sum of the differences between (i) the target segment length and (ii) the number of words, if the target segment length is expressed as a number of words, or the number of syllables, if the target segment length is expressed as a number of syllables, between each consecutive pair of final break points is minimal; wherein each sequence of words situated between each consecutive pair of final break points is identified as a segment. 4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the parsing step comprises a first sub-step of pre-processing the sentence to break it into fragments based on mid-sentence punctuation marks and including candidate break points at the beginning and end of each fragment, and a second sub-step of parsing each fragment to identify candidate break points based on punctuation and parts of speech.