The cheap and cheerful way to cheat this problem is to use a restricted grammar that allows synonyms. And one of the many libraries that wrap strptime for date

The cheap and cheerful way to cheat this problem is to use a restricted grammar that allows synonyms. And one of the many libraries that wrap strptime for date parsing. In other words; schedule, remind, tell, add; might all represent the same operation. If you go this route, do write a BNF grammar, do test with a reasonably large corpus of 'live' requests. here is a link that should get you started. http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/Quick+Starter+on+Parser+Grammars+-+No+Past+Experience+Required http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/Quick+Starter+on+Pa...