An arrangement for adapting statistical parsers to new data using a mathematical transform, particularly a Markov transform. In particular, it is assumed that an initial statistical parser is available and a batch of new data is given. The initial model is mapped to a new model by a Markov matrix, each of whose rows sums to one. In the unsupervised setup, where “true” parses are missing, the transform matrix is obtained by maximizing the log likelihood of the parses of test data decoded using the model before adaptation. The proposed algorithm can be applied to supervised adaptation, as well.