1,152 research outputs found
Incremental Interpretation: Applications, Theory, and Relationship to Dynamic Semantics
Why should computers interpret language incrementally? In recent years
psycholinguistic evidence for incremental interpretation has become more and
more compelling, suggesting that humans perform semantic interpretation before
constituent boundaries, possibly word by word. However, possible computational
applications have received less attention. In this paper we consider various
potential applications, in particular graphical interaction and dialogue. We
then review the theoretical and computational tools available for mapping from
fragments of sentences to fully scoped semantic representations. Finally, we
tease apart the relationship between dynamic semantics and incremental
interpretation.Comment: Procs. of COLING 94, LaTeX (2.09 preferred), 8 page
Infinity and the Foundations of Linguistics
The concept of linguistic infinity has had a central role to play in foundational debates within theoretical linguistics since its more formal inception in the mid-twentieth century. The Conceptualist tradition, marshalled in by Chomsky and others, holds that infinity is a core explanandum and a link to the formal sciences. Realism/Platonism takes this further to argue that linguistics is in fact a formal science with an abstract ontology. In this paper, I argue that a central misconstrual of formal apparatus of recursive operations such as the set-theoretic operation merge has led to a mathematisation of the object of inquiry, producing a strong analogy with discrete mathematics and especially arithmetic. The main product of this error has been the assumption that natural, like some formal, languages are discretely infinite. I will offer an alternative means
of capturing the insights and observations related to this posit in terms of scientific modelling. My chief aim will be to draw from the larger philosophy of science literature in order to offer a position of grammars as models compatible with various foundational interpretations of linguistics while being informed by contemporary ideas on scientific modelling for the natural and social sciences
Infinity and the Foundations of Linguistics
The concept of linguistic infinity has had a central role to play in foundational debates within theoretical linguistics since its more formal inception in the mid-twentieth century. The Conceptualist tradition, marshalled in by Chomsky and others, holds that infinity is a core explanandum and a link to the formal sciences. Realism/Platonism takes this further to argue that linguistics is in fact a formal science with an abstract ontology. In this paper, I argue that a central misconstrual of formal apparatus of recursive operations such as the set-theoretic operation merge has led to a mathematisation of the object of inquiry, producing a strong analogy with discrete mathematics and especially arithmetic. The main product of this error has been the assumption that natural, like some formal, languages are discretely infinite. I will offer an alternative means
of capturing the insights and observations related to this posit in terms of scientific modelling. My chief aim will be to draw from the larger philosophy of science literature in order to offer a position of grammars as models compatible with various foundational interpretations of linguistics while being informed by contemporary ideas on scientific modelling for the natural and social sciences
Teaching computer language handling - From compiler theory to meta-modelling
Most universities teach computer language handling by mainly focussing on compiler theory, although MDA (model-driven architecture) and meta-modelling are increasingly important in the software industry as well as in computer science. In this article, we investigate how traditional compiler theory compares to meta-modelling with regard to formally defining the different aspects of a language, and how we can expand the focus in computer language handling courses to also include meta-model-based approaches. We give an outline of a computer language handling course that covers both paradigms, and share some experiences from running a course based on this outline at the University of Agder
Principles and Implementation of Deductive Parsing
We present a system for generating parsers based directly on the metaphor of
parsing as deduction. Parsing algorithms can be represented directly as
deduction systems, and a single deduction engine can interpret such deduction
systems so as to implement the corresponding parser. The method generalizes
easily to parsers for augmented phrase structure formalisms, such as
definite-clause grammars and other logic grammar formalisms, and has been used
for rapid prototyping of parsing algorithms for a variety of formalisms
including variants of tree-adjoining grammars, categorial grammars, and
lexicalized context-free grammars.Comment: 69 pages, includes full Prolog cod
Categorial Grammar
The paper is a review article comparing a number of approaches to natural language syntax and semantics that have been developed using categorial frameworks.
It distinguishes two related but distinct varieties of categorial theory, one related to Natural Deduction systems and the axiomatic calculi of Lambek, and another which involves more specialized combinatory operations
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Automating class definitions from OWL to English
Text definitions for entities within bio-ontologies are a cor-nerstone of the effort to gain a consensus in understanding and usage of those ontologies. Writing these definitions is, however, a considerable effort and there is often a lag be-tween specification of the entities in the ontology and the development of the text-based definitions. As well as these text definitions, there can also be logical descriptions and definitions of an ontology's entities. The goal of natural lan-guage generation (NLG) from ontologies is to take the logi-cal description of entities and generate fluent natural lan-guage. We should be able to use NLG to automatically pro-vide text-based definitions from an ontology that has logical descriptions of its entities and thus avoid the bottleneck of authoring these definitions by hand. In this paper we present some early work in using NLG to provide such text definitions for the Experimental factor Ontology (EFO). We present our results, discuss issues in generating text definitions, and highlight some future work
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