Modelling Grammaticality-grading in Natural Language Systems Using a Vector Space Approach

There exist several natural language processing systems that focus on checking the grammaticality (grammatical correctness or incorrectness) of natural language texts. Studies however showed that most existing systems do not assign specific scores to the grammaticality of the analysed text. Such scores would for instance prove very useful to second language learners and tutors, for judging the progress made in the learning process and assigning performance scores respectively. The current study was embarked upon to address this problem. A grammaticality grading model which comprised of 6 equations was developed using a vector space approach. The model was implemented in a natural language processing system. Correlation analysis showed that the grading (in %) performed using the developed model correlated at a coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.9985 with the percentage of grammatical sentences in evaluated texts. The developed model is therefore deemed suitable for grammaticality grading in natural language texts. The developed model would readily find use in computer aided language learning and automated essay scoring.