43,718 research outputs found
A Corpus-Based Investigation of Definite Description Use
We present the results of a study of definite descriptions use in written
texts aimed at assessing the feasibility of annotating corpora with information
about definite description interpretation. We ran two experiments, in which
subjects were asked to classify the uses of definite descriptions in a corpus
of 33 newspaper articles, containing a total of 1412 definite descriptions. We
measured the agreement among annotators about the classes assigned to definite
descriptions, as well as the agreement about the antecedent assigned to those
definites that the annotators classified as being related to an antecedent in
the text. The most interesting result of this study from a corpus annotation
perspective was the rather low agreement (K=0.63) that we obtained using
versions of Hawkins' and Prince's classification schemes; better results
(K=0.76) were obtained using the simplified scheme proposed by Fraurud that
includes only two classes, first-mention and subsequent-mention. The agreement
about antecedents was also not complete. These findings raise questions
concerning the strategy of evaluating systems for definite description
interpretation by comparing their results with a standardized annotation. From
a linguistic point of view, the most interesting observations were the great
number of discourse-new definites in our corpus (in one of our experiments,
about 50% of the definites in the collection were classified as discourse-new,
30% as anaphoric, and 18% as associative/bridging) and the presence of
definites which did not seem to require a complete disambiguation.Comment: 47 pages, uses fullname.sty and palatino.st
Non-situational functions of demonstrative noun phrases in Lingala (Bantu)
This paper examines the non-situational (i.e., non-exophoric) pragmatic functions of the three adnominal demonstratives, oyo, wand, and yango in the Bantu language Lingala. An examination of natural language corpora reveals that, although native-speaker intuitions sanction the use of oyo as an anaphor in demonstrative NPs, this demonstrative is hardly ever used in that role. It also reveals that wand, which has both situational and discourse-referential capacities, is used more frequently than the exclusively anaphoric demonstrative yango. It is explained that wand appears in a wide range of non-coreferential expression types, in coreferential expression types involving low-salience referents, and in coreferential expression types that both involve highly salient referents and include the speaker's desire to signal a shift in the mental representation of the referent towards a pejorative reading. The use of yango, on the other hand, is only licensed in cases of coreferentiality involving highly salient referents and implying continuation of the same mental representation of the referent. A specific section is devoted to charting the possible grammaticalization paths followed by the demonstratives. Conclusions are drawn for pragmatic theory formation in terms of the relation between form (yango vs. wand) and function (coreferentiality vs. non-coreferentiality)
Accessibility of referent information influences sentence planning : An eye-tracking study
Acknowledgments We thank Phoebe Ye and Gouming Martens for help with data collection for Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. This research was supported by the European Research Council for the ERC Starting Grant (206198) to YC.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Higher-order Linear Logic Programming of Categorial Deduction
We show how categorial deduction can be implemented in higher-order (linear)
logic programming, thereby realising parsing as deduction for the associative
and non-associative Lambek calculi. This provides a method of solution to the
parsing problem of Lambek categorial grammar applicable to a variety of its
extensions.Comment: 8 pages LaTeX, uses eaclap.sty, to appear EACL9
Information theory and representation in associative word learning
A significant portion of early language learning
can be viewed as an associative learning
problem. We investigate the use of associative
language learning based on the principle that
words convey Shannon information about the
environment. We discuss the shortcomings
in representation used by previous associative
word learners and propose a functional representation
that not only denotes environmental
categories, but serves as the basis for activities
and interaction with the environment.
We present experimental results with an autonomous
agent acquiring language
- …