Harold the Herald—Language Processing in the Automation of Heraldic Conflict Checking

摘要

Blazon, the language of heraldry, lies somewhere between a formal language and a natural language. We develop an Augmented Transition Network grammar to parse the blazons (verbal descriptions) of individual heraldic devices into an internal representation that is used to compare the elements of one heraldic device to those of other devices. These comparisons are used in determining whether a proposed device meets certain requirements for uniqueness.