The purpose of this paper will be to present a scheme to locate for single textual items and idioms in textual order their corresponding dictionary entries stored in an IBM 1301 random access mechanism. Textual items are considered to be 24 characters in length (left justified with following blanks). A dictionary entry consists of a 24 character Russian form, grammar information for the form and a set of translations for that form. Dictionary entries are packed into sequential tracks of the 1301. This paper will cover the method used for dictionary storage. The lookup for a textual item I first consists of a search for the first track that the dictionary entry E (if one exists) for I could be stored in. Once a track has been determined its contents are searched in core by a bisection convergence technique to find E. If E cannot be found, a “no entry” indication is made. If E is found a further search is made of the dictionary to find the longest sequence of text, starting with the first item I, that has a dictionary entry. The last such entry found is picked up. Included in the presentation will be examples of the dictionary lookup output for actual text.

Decision tables have recently become an object of investigation as a possible means of improving problem formulation of data processing procedures. The initial emphasis for this new tool came from systems analysts who were primarily concerned with business data processing problems. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the suitability of decision tables as a means of expressing syntactic relations as an alternative to customary flow charting techniques. The history of decision tables will be briefly reviewed and several kinds of decision tables will be defined. As an example, parts of the predicative blocking routine developed at Wayne State University will be presented as formulated with the aid of decision tables. The aim of the predicative blocking routine is to group a predicative form together with its modal and temporal auxiliaries, infinitive complements, and negative particle, if any of these exist. The object of the search is to define such a syntactic block, but it may turn out instead that an infinitive phrase is defined or that a possible predicative form turns out to be an adverb.