ANLT - The Alvey Natural Language Tools

The UK Alvey Programme originally funded three projects at the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Lancaster to provide tools for use in natural language processing research. The DTI and SERC funded their continued support and enhancement. The tools, a morphological analyser, parsers, and a grammar and lexicon (click on the components to find published references to them), are usable individually as well as together - integrated by a grammar development environment - forming a complete system for the morphological, syntactic and semantic analysis of a considerable subset of English.

(If you are looking for information on the latest project go to the RASP project

) The following information is available on-line:

The latest release of the ANLT is release 4. If you have paid for release 3 or an upgrade to release 3, you are entitled to FTP release 4 at no extra charge; see the FTP instructions and use the same decryption key as you were given for release 3.

There will be further releases of ANLT integrating some of the recent work described in the references. If you hold an ANLT licence and wish to be informed directly about these releases, please check the list of known licence holders and contact information and send email if this is inaccurate, incomplete or outdated. Here is some technical information on release 4 that has been added since the release date.


References to Published Papers on the ANLT

Ritchie, G., A. Black, S. Pulman & G. Russell (1987) The Edinburgh/Cambridge Morphological Analyser and Dictionary System. Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, Software Paper No. 10. Click here to fetch it.

Boguraev, B., J. Carroll, E. Briscoe, D. Carter, & C. Grover (1987) "The derivation of a grammatically-indexed lexicon from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English." In Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Stanford, CA. 193-200.

Briscoe, E., C. Grover, B. Boguraev & J. Carroll (1987) "A formalism and environment for the development of a large grammar of English." In Proceedings of the 10th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Milan, Italy. 703-708.

Briscoe, E., C. Grover, B. Boguraev & J. Carroll (1987) "Feature defaults, propagation and reentrancy." In E. Klein & J. van Bentham (eds.) Categories, Polymorphism and Unification, Centre for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh. 19-34.

Ritchie, G., S. Pulman, G. Russell & A. Black (1987) "A computational framework for lexical description." Computational Linguistics, 13. 290-307.

Boguraev, B., J. Carroll, E. Briscoe & C. Grover (1988) "Software support for practical grammar development." In Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), Budapest, Hungary. 54-58.

Carroll, J. & C. Grover (1989) "The derivation of a large computational lexicon of English from LDOCE." In B. Boguraev & E. Briscoe (eds.) Computational Lexicography for Natural Language Processing, Harlow, UK: Longman. 117-134.

Taylor, L., C. Grover & E. Briscoe (1989) "The syntactic regularity of English noun phrases." In Proceedings of the 4th European Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, UMIST, Manchester, UK. 256-263

Carroll, J., E. Briscoe & C. Grover (1991) A development environment for large natural language grammars. Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK, Technical Report 233. Click here to fetch it.

Ritchie, G., G. Russell, A. Black & S. Pulman (1992) Computational morphology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Grover, C., J. Carroll & E. Briscoe (1993) The Alvey Natural Language Tools grammar (4th release). Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK, Technical Report 284. Click here to fetch it.


References to More Recent Work Based Around the ANLT

Briscoe, E. & J. Carroll (1991) Generalised probabilistic LR parsing of natural language (corpora) with unification-based grammars. Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK, Technical Report 224.

Briscoe, E. & Waegner, N. (1992) "Robust stochastic parsing using the inside-outside algorithm." In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Statistically-based NLP Techniques, San Jose, CA. Click here to fetch it.

Carroll, J. & E. Briscoe (1992) "Probabilistic normalisation and unpacking of packed parse forests for unification-based grammars." In Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Probabilistic Approaches to Natural Language, Cambridge, MA. 33--38. Click here to fetch it.

Carroll, J. (1993) Practical unification-based parsing of natural language. Computer Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK, Ph.D. thesis, Technical Report 314. Click here to fetch it.

Briscoe, E. & J. Carroll (1993) "Generalised probabilistic LR parsing of natural language (corpora) with unification-based grammars." Computational Linguistics, 19(1). 25-60.

Carroll, J. (1994) "Relating complexity to practical performance in parsing with wide-coverage unification grammars." In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, NMSU, Las Cruces, NM. 287-294. Click here to fetch it.

Jones, B. (1994) "Can punctuation help parsing?" In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING-94, Kyoto, Japan.

Carroll, J. & E. Briscoe (1994) "Integrating probabilistic and knowledge-based approaches to corpus parsing." In Proceedings of the AISB Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Speech and Handwriting Recognition, Leeds University, UK.

Briscoe, E. and Carroll, J. (1995) "Developing and evaluating a probabilistic LR parser of part-of-speech and punctuation labels." In Proceedings of the ACL/SIGPARSE 4th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, IWPT95," Prague / Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, 48-58.

Briscoe, E. (1996) "The syntax and semantics of punctuation and its use in interpretation." In Proceedings of the ACL SIGPARSE Workshop on Punctuation in Computational Linguistics, Santa Cruz, CA, 1-8.

Carroll, J. and Briscoe, E. (1996) "Apportioning development effort in a probabilistic LR parsing system through evaluation." In Proceedings of the ACL/SIGDAT Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA., 92-100.

Briscoe, E. and Carroll, J. (1997) "Automatic extraction of subcategorization from corpora." In Proceedings of the 5th ACL Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing, Washington, DC, 356-363.

Hektoen, E. (1997) "Statistical parse selection using semantic cooccurrences." Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, Doctoral Dissertation.

Hektoen, E. (1997) "Probabilistic parse selection based on semantic cooccurrences." Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, IWPT5, MIT, Boston, MA.

McCarthy, D. (1997) "Word sense disambiguation for acquisition of selectional preferences." Proceedings of the ACL-EACL Workshop on Automatic Information Extraction and Building of Lexical Semantic Resources for NLP Applications, Madrid, Spain, 52-61.

Carroll, J., Minnen, G. and Briscoe, E. (1998) "Can subcategorisation probabilities help a statistical parser?" In Proceedings of the ACL SIGDAT 6th Workshop on Very Large Corpora, Montreal, Canada, 118-126.

McCarthy, D. and Korhonen, A. (1998) "Detecting verbal participation in diathesis alternations." Proceedings of the 36th Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Montreal, Canada, 1493-1495.

Osborne, M. and Briscoe, E. (1998) "Minimum description length incremental learning during natural language parsing." EU LE2111 Sparkle Project WP-4. Click to find

Carroll, J., Minnen, G. and Briscoe, E. (1999) "Corpus annotation for parser evaluation." In EACL-99 Post-Conference Workshop on Linguistically Interpreted Corpora, LINC-99, Bergen, Norway, 35-41.

Carroll, J., Minnen, G., Pearce, D., Canning, Y., Devlin, S. and Tait, J. (1999) "Simplifying text for language-impaired readers." Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the European Chapter of the ACL, Bergen, Norway, 269-270.

Carroll, J. and McCarthy, D. (in press) "Word sense disambiguation using automatically acquired verbal preferences." Computers and the Humanities, 34.1-2.

(Many of the above papers can be retrieved from the cmp-lg computational linguistics archive: USA / Europe


Known References to Other Work Using the ANLT

Bouchard, L., Emirkanian, L., Estival, D., Fay-Varnier, C., Fouquere, C., Prigent, G. and Zweigenbaum, P. (1992) "First results of a French linguistic development environment." 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, COLING-92, Nantes, France, 1177-1181.

Douglas, S. (1992) "Converting the ANLT grammar." HCRC, University of Edinburgh, Technical Report.

Futrelle, R., Dunn, C., Ellis, D. and Pescitelli, M. (1991) "Preprocessing and lexicon design for parsing technical text." Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Parsing Technologies, IWPT2, Cancun, Mexico, 31-40.

Holt, A. and Klein, E. (1999) "A semantically-derived subset of English for hardware verification." Proceedings of the 37th Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, College Park, MD, 451-456.

Light, M. (1994) "Derivational affixes and the semantics of unknown words." Proceedings of KONVENS94, Germany.

van Noord, G. (1997) "An efficient implementation of the head-corner parser." Computational Linguistics, 23.3, 425-465.

Osborne, M. (1998) "Integrating speech and language technologies." Report for BT Short-term Fellowship, BT Labs, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich.

Osborne, M. and MacNish, C. (1996) "Processing natural language software requirements specifications." International Conference on Requirements Engineering, Colorado Springs, CO.

Whittemore, G., Grover, C., Kim, A. and Moens, M. (1993) "The Menelas English natural language understander (version 0.1)." LTG, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, Menelas Deliverable WP1.1, European AIM Project A2023.


Known Licence Holders and Contact Details

The ANLT is known to have been distributed to over 100 sites, but there may be some gaps in the list that we have. Please send updates and corrections by email

Institution : Contact : Email

  • University of Sussex, COGS : Chris Rourke : chrisr@cogs.susx.ac.uk
  • System Applied Technology, Sheffield : J Horton
  • UMIST, Centre for Computational Linguistics : Prof. Allan Ramsay
  • BT Research Labs, MLB/14(Natural Language Processing) : Peter Wyard : wyard@bt.co.uk
  • University of Durham, School of Engineering and Applied Science : Prof. R. Garigliano
  • Trent Polytechnic, Department of Computing : Frank Keenan : fgk@trent-poly.doc.ac.uk
  • University of Aston, Department of Computer Science : Dr. Gay
  • University of Surrey, Computing Unit : Dr. K. Ahmad
  • University of Leeds, CCALAS : Dr. E. S. Atwell : eric@cs.leeds.ac.uk
  • University of Exeter, Department of Computer Science : Mr. P. O'Brien
  • Portsmouth Polytechnic, School of Languages and Area Studies : Mr. T. Seldon
  • Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Alfa-Informatica, The Netherlands : Dr. J. de Vuyst
  • Queen's University Belfast, Department of Computer Science : Dr. R. G. Rankin
  • University of Essex, Department of Language and Linguistics : Mr. A. Holyer
  • University of Glasgow, Department of Computing Science : Dr. R. Leon : ruben@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk
  • University of Quebec at Montreal, Department of Linguistics, Canada : Prof. L. Emirkanian
  • University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Department of Informatics : Mr. McTear
  • Universitaet Tuebingen, Seminar fuer Naturlich-Sprachliche Systeme : Mr. John D. Phillips
  • University of Melbourne, Department of Russian and Language Studies, Australia : Prof. R. Sussex : sussex@murdu.oz.au
  • University of East Anglia, Computing Centre : Dr. K. Woods
  • Vassar College, Department of Computer Science, USA : Prof. Nancy Ide
  • CNRS, Group Rep et Traitement des Connaissances, Marseille, France : Ms F. Picard
  • Universite Paris Nord, Departement de Mathematiques et Informatique, France : Mr. N. Fouquere
  • University of Birmingham, University Computing Service : Mr. B. Prangle
  • University of Sheffield, Department of Psychology
  • Robert Gordons Institute of Technology, School of Mathematical Sciences and Computer Studies : Mr. H. Noble
  • University of Manchester, Department of Computer Science : Dr. Ian Pratt
  • Kingston Polytechnic, School of Information Systems : Mr. B. J. L. Saxby
  • Institut National de la Sante at de la Recherche Medicale, Group de Recherche U194, Paris, France : Pierre Zwiegenbaum
  • University of Bradford, Department of Computing : Mr. J. C. Brown
  • University of Utrecht, Department of Linguistics, The Netherlands : Dr. H. Ruessink
  • South Bank Polytechnic, Department of Electrical Engineering : Dr. G. Richardson
  • Electronic and Telecommunication Research Institute, Korean Engineering Research Group, South Korea : Kweon-Yang Kim
  • Brunel University, Department of Computer Science
  • Tilburg University, Institute for Language Technology and Artificial Intelligence, The Netherlands : Arthur van Horck
  • University of Massachusetts at Amherst, COINS, USA : David D. Lewis
  • Oxford Polytechnic, Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences : B. Gorayska
  • University of Geneva, ISSCO, Switzerland : Prof. Susan Warwick : susan@divsun.unige.ch
  • University of Edinburgh, CSTR : Alex Zbyslaw
  • Northeastern University, College of Computer Science, Boston, USA : Beth Nicholson
  • CNRS, Nancy, France : Kartine Kuhlmann
  • Imperial College of Science and Technology, Department of Computing : Chris Moss
  • Nottingham Polytechnic, Department of Computing : Frank Keenan
  • University of Chicago, Centre for Information and Language Studies, USA : Jessie Pinkham
  • Telaviv University, Graduate School of Business Administration, Israel : Prof. Phillip Ein-Dor
  • OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc, Dublin, Ohio, USA : Mary Landers
  • University of York, Department of Computer Science : Dr. S Manandhar : suresh@cs.york.ac.uk
  • Carnegie Mellon University, Computational Linguistics Program, USA : Dr. R. Carpenter
  • Amherst College, Dept. of Maths & Computer Science, USA : Prof. John Rager
  • Queen Mary & Westfield College, Department of Computer Science : Alan Ball
  • CNRS, Laboratoire ARAMIIHS, Toulouse, France : Dr. Jean-Paul Denier
  • University of Rochester, Computer Science Department, USA : Liudvikas Bukys : bukys@cs.rochester.edu
  • Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat, Institut fur Mathematische Maschinen und Datenverarbeitung (IMMD), Erlangen, Germany : Clemens Beckstein
  • University of Helsinki, Department of General Linguistics, Finland : Prof. Fred Karlsson
  • University of Twente, Department of Computer Science, The Netherlands : Dr. Wilco ter Stal : terstal@cs.utwente.nl
  • CEC, Luxembourg : Dr. Neil Simpkins
  • Basque Country University, Faculty of Computer Science : Kepa Sarasola : KEPA@gorria.if.ehu.es
  • University of New South Wales, Australia : Graham Mann : mann@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au
  • Sheffield University, Department of Information Studies : David Miller
  • University of Edinburgh, Department of Linguistics : Colin Matheson : colin@ed.cstr
  • Universitaet Erlangen-Nurnberg, Institute fuer Maths. Maschinen, Germany : Clemens Beckstein
  • Royal Holloway and Bedford New College : Dr. P. Pal
  • University of Sunderland, Dept. of Computer Science : Prof. J. Tait : cs0jta@isis.sunderland.ac.uk
  • Universitaet Koblez-Landau, Institute fuer Computerlinguistik, Germany : Prof. Dr. Michael Hess
  • Institute for Language and Speech Processing, Athens, Greece : Penny Labropoulou
  • University College London, Department of English : Mr. R. Gibney
  • University of Umea, Department of Linguistics, Sweden : Eva Ejerhed
  • Microsoft Institute, Australia : Alpha Luk
  • University of Quebec at Montreal, Department of Mathematique and Informatique, Canada : Lorne H. Bouchard
  • Bilkent University, Department of Computer Engineering, Turkey : Dr. Kemal Oflazer
  • The Mitre Corporation, McLean, USA : Jim Blankner
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA : Scott F. Barker
  • Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, USA : Dr. B. Boguraev
  • GMD GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany : Dr. N. Streitz
  • Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corp, Take, Japan : Mr. Hirotaka
  • Xerox European Research Centre, MLTT, Grenoble, France : Dr. G. Grefenstette : Gregory.Grefenstette@xrce.xerox.com
  • National Research Council of Canada, Ontario, Canada : Mr. Arnold G. Smith
  • CNET LAA SLC AIA, Lannion, France : M. Gilles Prigent
  • Sentinent Systems Technology Inc, Pittsburg, USA : Mr. Gary Kiliany
  • GMV SA, Madrid, Spain : Dr. J. V. Garbajosa
  • George Mason University, Fairfax, USA : Dr. Ann Fields : spark@mason1.gmu.edu
  • University of Edinburgh, Centre for Cognitive Science : Dr. Marc Moens : marc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk
  • LSR IMAG Lab Logiciel Systemes et Reseaux, Grenoble, France : Dr. Pierre Berlioux
  • Universitaet Zurich, Institute fuer Informatik, Switzerland : Dr M. Hess
  • Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Dept de Lienguatges i Systemes Informatica, Spain : Ana Ibanez
  • Sharp Labs of Europe Ltd, Oxford : Dr. V. Poznanski : victor.poznanski@sharp.co.uk
  • PO Box 26489 : Dr. N. G. Torre
  • New Mexico State University, Computing Research Lab, USA : Ted Dunning
  • University of Dublin, Centre for Language & Communication Studies, Ireland : Prof. D. G. Little
  • Dublin City University, Computer Application, Irelands : Sean O'Nuallain
  • Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology : Prof. Key Sun Choi
  • MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, USA : Prof. Bob Berwick : berwick@ai.mit.edu
  • Microsoft Research Labs, NLP Group, Redmond, USA : Dr. S Richardson : steveri@microsoft.com
  • Macquarie University, Dept. of Linguistics, Australia : Dr. Jonathan Harrington : jmh@srsuna.shlrc.mq.oz.au
  • Pohang Univ. of Science and Technology, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, South Korea : Geunbae Lee : gblee@postech.ac.kr
  • City University of Hong Kong, Language Information Sciences Research Centre, Hong Kong : Tom Lai : CTTOMLAI@cityu.edu.hk
  • Ergo Linguistic Technologies, USA : Anne Sing : annes@htdc.org
  • Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto, USA : Diana Roberts
  • AT&T Research Labs, USA
  • EPFL, Service Informatique Central, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • University of Strathclyde
  • Darmstadt Universitaet, Germany
  • Logica UK Ltd, Cambridge
  • USWest, USA