A Tableau Calculus for Pronoun Resolution

We present a tableau calculus for reasoning in fragments of natural language. We focus on the problem of pronoun resolution and the way in which it complicates automated theorem proving for natural language processing. A method for explicitly manipulating contextual information during deduction is proposed, where pronouns are resolved against this context during deduction. As a result, pronoun resolution and deduction can be interleaved in such a way that pronouns are only resolved if this is licensed by a deduction rule; this helps us to avoid the combinatorial complexity of total pronoun disambiguation.Comment: 16 page

Sloppy Identity

Although sloppy interpretation is usually accounted for by theories of ellipsis, it often arises in non-elliptical contexts. In this paper, a theory of sloppy interpretation is provided which captures this fact. The underlying idea is that sloppy interpretation results from a semantic constraint on parallel structures and the theory is shown to predict sloppy readings for deaccented and paycheck sentences as well as relational-, event-, and one-anaphora. It is further shown to capture the interaction of sloppy/strict ambiguity with quantification and binding.Comment: 20 page

Computing Presuppositions by Contextual Reasoning

This paper describes how automated deduction methods for natural language processing can be applied more efficiently by encoding context in a more elaborate way. Our work is based on formal approaches to context, and we provide a tableau calculus for contextual reasoning. This is explained by considering an example from the problem area of presupposition projection.Comment: 5 page

Type-driven natural language analysis

The purpose of this thesis is in showing how recent developments in logic programming can be exploited to encode in a computational environment the features of certain linguistic theories. We are in this way able to make available for the purpose of natural language processing sophisticated capabilities of linguistic analysis directly justified by well developed grammatical frameworks. More specifically, we exploit hypothetical reasoning, recently proposed as one of the possible directions to widen logic programming, to account for the syntax of filler-gap dependencies along the lines of linguistic theories such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar and Categorial Grammar. Moreover, we make use, for the purpose of semantic analysis of the same kind of phenomena, of another recently proposed extension, interestingly related to the previous one, namely the idea of replacing first-order terms with the more expressive λ-terms of λ-Calculus

Representing discourse in context

This article gives a survey of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), including recent developments, and with an emphasis on logical issues. Discourse representation structures are defined, and various prespectives on their static and dynamic meaning are discussed. This discussion leads to the study of the process of merging representation structures, a process which can be viewed as a strategy for memory management. Next, a toy example fragment of English is presented, with a compositional DRT semantics. The final sections are devoted to the treatment of quantification and of tense and aspect

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

Discourse representation in context

Discourse representation in context is the attempt to capture certain aspects of the interpretation of natural language texts that are beyond the mere truth conditions of the text. This paper is an update to our previous overview (1994)