The concept of imaginary parsing is advanced for recognition of partially obscured patterns.

A new formalism is proposed for the syntactic description and recognition of two-dimensional patterns. The recognition problem is treated comprehensively from scanning and primitive identification all the way to recognition of patterns syntactically.

The vehicle of grammars coupled with ideas of static and dynamic chaining of pattern primitives are used for describing arbitrary two-dimensional patterns. Primitives in the grammar are unquantized vector entities. The grammar derives a "pattern form, " while parametrization of the pattern form yields specific patterns.