COMMAND PARSING AND REWRITE SYSTEM

A system and method of allowing a user to control a computer application with spoken commands, include the steps of processing the spoken commands with a Speech Recognition application into candidate word phrases, and parsing at least one candidate word phrase with a Context Free Grammar (CFG) parser, into a parse tree. A plurality of predefined rewrite rules grouped into a plurality of phases applied are to the parse tree, for rewriting the parse tree. Each of the plurality of rewrite rules includes a pattern matching portion, for matching at least a part of the parse tree, and a rewrite component, for rewriting the matched part. A command string is produced by traversing each terminal node of the modified parse tree. The command string is sent to an interpreter application or directly to the computer application. Possible applications include word processing and other voice-entry systems.