NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR CONVERTING WORD NOTATION GRAMMAR DESCRIPTION DATA

A natural language processing apparatus converts word notation grammar description data, which explain the rules for the construction of words that belong to categories having a variety of notations, such as the names of product models, onomatopoeic words and numerical expressions, into word notation context free grammar data that are expressed in the form of an expanded context free grammar. In the analysis processing according to the context free grammar, a character string that satisfies the construction rule for a product model name, an onomatopoeic word or a numerical expression is extracted as a word from the natural language sentence that is an input in accordance with the word notation context free grammar data. Further, in accordance with a category that corresponds to the construction rule, the part of speech and the pronunciation of the word are determined by referring to a dictionary in which word information for each category is explained. Finally, the natural language sentence that is input is rendered vocally.