This book is aimed at research students and research workers interested in current views on the problems and techniques of automatic natural language parsing. Parsing is a key element of natural language processing as a whole, and the design of natural language processing systems is an important area on the one hand of information technology, and on the other of language studies. Information technology oriented research, concerned with both language-based systems for purposes like summarising and with language subsystems as components of, for example, expert systems, needs effective parsing procedures. Linguistics oriented research needs effective parsing models.. The book is intended to exhibit the state of the art in automatic natural language parsing, at the intersection of these two concerns. Research and development in language processing over the last decade has explored specific approaches to parsing in some depth, has consolidated practical experience, and has emphasised some trends, for example towards phrase structure grammar and deterministic parsing, and towards the closer integration of syntax and semantics. The papers collected here, spread across the whole area of parsing, represent the present thinking of active workers in the field on issues and possibilities stemming from the last decade's work.