1. A processor for parsing digitally encoded natural language text, such processor comprising means for receiving encoded natural language text for processing, dictionary means for storing words of the natural language together with a list of associated tags indicative of the possible grammatical or syntactic properties of each word, means for looking up a word of the text in the dictionary and annotating the word with its associated tags from the dictionary to provide a word record, means operative on word records of words of a sentence for defining a relative probability of occurrence of a tag sequence consisting of one tag selected from the word record of each word of a sequence of words of the sentence, means for constructing a selected set of tag sequences having a tag selected from the tags associated with each word of the sequence of words and determining a tag sequence of greatest relative probability of occurrence thereby identifying a single most probable tag for each word of the sequence, and grammatical processing means for identifying grammatical structure from the ordering of the single tag for each said word so as to obtain a parse of the sentence.
1. A processor for parsing digitally encoded natural language text, such processor comprising means for receiving encoded natural language text for processing, dictionary means for storing words of the natural language together with a list of associated tags indicative of the possible grammatical or syntactic properties of each word, means for looking up a word of the text in the dictionary and annotating the word with its associated tags from the dictionary to provide a word record, means operative on word records of words of a sentence for defining a relative probability of occurrence of a tag sequence consisting of one tag selected from the word record of each word of a sequence of words of the sentence, means for constructing a selected set of tag sequences having a tag selected from the tags associated with each word of the sequence of words and determining a tag sequence of greatest relative probability of occurrence thereby identifying a single most probable tag for each word of the sequence, and grammatical processing means for identifying grammatical structure from the ordering of the single tag for each said word so as to obtain a parse of the sentence. 2. A processor according to claim 1, wherein the means for defining a relative probability of tag sequences includes means for selecting fewer than a fixed number n of sequences from said selected set and for defining said relative probability thereon.