Target-Tailored Source-Transformation for Scene Graph Generation

Scene graph generation aims to provide a semantic and structural description of an image, denoting the objects (with nodes) and their relationships (with edges). The best performing works to date are based on exploiting the context surrounding objects or relations,e.g., by passing information among objects. In these approaches, to transform the representation of source objects is a critical process for extracting information for the use by target objects. In this work, we argue that a source object should give what tar-get object needs and give different objects different information rather than contributing common information to all targets. To achieve this goal, we propose a Target-TailoredSource-Transformation (TTST) method to efficiently propagate information among object proposals and relations. Particularly, for a source object proposal which will contribute information to other target objects, we transform the source object feature to the target object feature domain by simultaneously taking both the source and target into account. We further explore more powerful representations by integrating language prior with the visual context in the transformation for the scene graph generation. By doing so the target object is able to extract target-specific information from the source object and source relation accordingly to refine its representation. Our framework is validated on the Visual Genome bench-mark and demonstrated its state-of-the-art performance for the scene graph generation. The experimental results show that the performance of object detection and visual relation-ship detection are promoted mutually by our method

Quantificational variability effects with plural definites : quantification over individuals or situations?

In this paper we compare the behaviour of adverbs of frequency (de Swart 1993) like usually with the behaviour of adverbs of quantity like for the most part in sentences that contain plural definites. We show that sentences containing the former type of Q-adverb evidence that Quantificational Variability Effects (Berman 1991) come about as an indirect effect of quantification over situations: in order for quantificational variability readings to arise, these sentences have to obey two newly observed constraints that clearly set them apart from sentences containing corresponding quantificational DPs, and that can plausibly be explained under the assumption that quantification over (the atomic parts of) complex situations is involved. Concerning sentences with the latter type of Q-adverb, on the other hand, such evidence is lacking: with respect to the constraints just mentioned, they behave like sentences that contain corresponding quantificational DPs. We take this as evidence that Q-adverbs like for the most part do not quantify over the atomic parts of sum eventualities in the cases under discussion (as claimed by Nakanishi and Romero (2004)), but rather over the atomic parts of the respective sum individuals

A Type-coherent, Expressive Representation as an Initial Step to Language Understanding

A growing interest in tasks involving language understanding by the NLP community has led to the need for effective semantic parsing and inference. Modern NLP systems use semantic representations that do not quite fulfill the nuanced needs for language understanding: adequately modeling language semantics, enabling general inferences, and being accurately recoverable. This document describes underspecified logical forms (ULF) for Episodic Logic (EL), which is an initial form for a semantic representation that balances these needs. ULFs fully resolve the semantic type structure while leaving issues such as quantifier scope, word sense, and anaphora unresolved; they provide a starting point for further resolution into EL, and enable certain structural inferences without further resolution. This document also presents preliminary results of creating a hand-annotated corpus of ULFs for the purpose of training a precise ULF parser, showing a three-person pairwise interannotator agreement of 0.88 on confident annotations. We hypothesize that a divide-and-conquer approach to semantic parsing starting with derivation of ULFs will lead to semantic analyses that do justice to subtle aspects of linguistic meaning, and will enable construction of more accurate semantic parsers.Comment: Accepted for publication at The 13th International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS 2019

The influence of tense in adverbial quantification

We argue that there is a crucial difference between determiner and adverbial quantification. Following Herburger [2000] and von Fintel [1994], we assume that determiner quantifiers quantify over individuals and adverbial quantifiers over eventualities. While it is usually assumed that the semantics of sentences with determiner quantifiers and those with adverbial quantifiers basically come out the same, we will show by way of new data that quantification over events is more restricted than quantification over individuals. This is because eventualities in contrast to individuals have to be located in time which is done using contextual information according to a pragmatic resolution strategy. If the contextual information and the tense information given in the respective sentence contradict each other, the sentence is uninterpretable. We conclude that this is the reason why in these cases adverbial quantification, i.e. quantification over eventualities, is impossible whereas quantification over individuals is fine

Changing a semantics: opportunism or courage?

The generalized models for higher-order logics introduced by Leon Henkin, and their multiple offspring over the years, have become a standard tool in many areas of logic. Even so, discussion has persisted about their technical status, and perhaps even their conceptual legitimacy. This paper gives a systematic view of generalized model techniques, discusses what they mean in mathematical and philosophical terms, and presents a few technical themes and results about their role in algebraic representation, calibrating provability, lowering complexity, understanding fixed-point logics, and achieving set-theoretic absoluteness. We also show how thinking about Henkin's approach to semantics of logical systems in this generality can yield new results, dispelling the impression of adhocness. This paper is dedicated to Leon Henkin, a deep logician who has changed the way we all work, while also being an always open, modest, and encouraging colleague and friend.Comment: 27 pages. To appear in: The life and work of Leon Henkin: Essays on his contributions (Studies in Universal Logic) eds: Manzano, M., Sain, I. and Alonso, E., 201

Papers on predicative constructions : Proceedings of the workshop on secundary predication, October 16-17, 2000, Berlin

This volume presents a collection of papers touching on various issues concerning the syntax and semantics of predicative constructions. A hot topic in the study of predicative copula constructions, with direct implications for the treatment of he (how many he's do we need?), and wider implications for the theories of predication, event-based semantics and aspect, is the nature and source of the situation argument. Closer examination of copula-less predications is becoming increasingly relevant to all these issues, as is clearly illustrated by the present collection