We present a novel approach to parsing phrase grammars based on Eric Brill's notion of rule sequences. The basic framework we describe has somewhat less power than a finite-state machine, and yet achieves high accuracy on standard phrase parsing tasks. The rule language is simple, which makes it easy to write rules. Further, this simpli- city enables the automatic acquisition of phrase- parsing rules through an error-reduction strategy. This paper explores an approach to syntactic analysis that is unconventional in several respects. To begin with, we are concerned not so much with the tradi- tional goal of analyzing the comprehensive structure of complete sentences, as much as with assigning partial structure to parts of sentences. The fragment of interest here is demonstrably a subset of ...

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