1,923 research outputs found
Towards a semantic typology of specific determiners
This paper investigates properties of a class of determiners which can be loosely la- belled specific in that their distribution falls in between maximally-quantifying definite determiners and indefinites which only contribute existential quantification. Based on a sample which includes data from Buryat, Komi, Mari, Mordvin, and Turkish, I propose that suffixal determiners form a semantically natural class in that their distribution can be modelled by means of a relational component in the semantics of the determiners which relates the denotation of the noun to an antecedent. I derive the observed distributional differences between languages from the range of values available for the interpretation of this component. In particular, whether a relation of identity falls within the range of val- ues has consequences for whether a suffixal determiner triggers existence presupposition, which, in turn, has consequences both for the interpretation of the DP in question and for the inter-paradigm competition in a language
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
Determiner spreading as DP-predication
Determiner Spreading (DS) occurs in adjectivally modified nominal phrases comprising more than one definite article, a phenomenon that has received considerable attention and has been extensively described in Greek. This paper discusses the syntactic properties of DS in detail and argues that DS structures are both arguments and predication configurations involving two DPs. This account successfully captures the word-order facts and the distinctive interpretation of DS, while also laying the groundwork towards unifying it with other structures linking two DPs in a predicative relation
Formal foundations for semantic theories of nominalisation
This paper develops the formal foundations of semantic theories dealing with various kinds of nominalisations. It introduces a combination of an event-calculus with a type-free theory which allows a compositional description to be given of such phenomena like Vendler's distinction between perfect and imperfect nominals, iteration of gerunds and Cresswell's notorious non-urrival of'the train examples. Moreover, the approach argued for in this paper allows a semantic explanation to be given for a wide range of grammatical observations such as the behaviour of certain tpes of nominals with respect to their verbal contexts or the distribution of negation in nominals
Non-Relational Intentionality
This dissertation lays the foundation for a new theory of non-relational intentionality.
The thesis is divided into an introduction and three main chapters, each of which serves
as an essential part of an overarching argument. The argument yields, as its conclusion, a
new account of how language and thought can exhibit intentionality intrinsically, so that
representation can occur in the absence of some thing that is represented. The overarching
argument has two components: first, that intentionality can be profitably studied through
examination of the semantics of intensional transitive verbs (ITVs), and second, that providing
intensional transitive verbs with a nonrelational semantics will serve to provide us
with (at least the beginnings of) a non-relational theory of intentionality. This approach is
a generalization of Anscombe's views on perception. Anscombe held that perceptual verbs
such as "see" and "perceive" were ITVs, and that understanding the semantics of their object positions could help us to solve the problems of hallucination and illusion, and provide
a theory of perception more generally. I propose to apply this strategy to intentional states
and the puzzles of intentionality more generally, and so Anscombe's influence will be felt
all through the dissertation.
In the first chapter, titled "Semantic Verbs are Intensional Transitives", I argue that
semantic verbs such as "refers to", "applies to", and "is true of" have all of the features of intensional transitive verbs, and discuss the consequences of this claim for semantic theory and the philosophy of language. One theoretically enriching consequence of this view is
that it allows us to perspicuously express, and partially reconcile two opposing views on
the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian view, on which semantics is an
internalistic enterprise concerning speakers' psychologies, and the Lewisian view, on which
semantics is a fully externalistic enterprise issuing in theorems about how the world must
look for our natural language sentences to be true. Intensional Transitive Verbs have two
readings: a de dicto reading and a de re reading; the de dicto reading of ITVs is plausibly a
nonrelational reading, and the intensional features peculiar to this reading make it suitable
for expressing a Chomskian, internalist semantic program. On the other hand, the de
re reading is fully relational, and make it suitable for expressing the kinds of word-world
relations essential to the Lewisian conception of semantics. And since the de dicto and de
re readings are plausibly related as two distinct scopal readings of the very same semantic
postulates, we can see these two conceptions of semantics as related by two scopal readings
of the very same semantic postulates.
In chapter two, titled "Hallucination and the New Problem of Empty Names", I argue
that the problem of hallucination and the problem of empty names are, at bottom, the
same problem. I argue for this by reconstructing the problem of empty names in way that
is novel, but implicit in much of the discussion on empty names. I then show how, once
recast in this light, the two problems are structurally identical down to an extremely fine
level of granularity, and also substantially overlap in terms of their content. If the problems
are identical in the way I propose, then we should expect that their spaces of solutions are
also identical, and there is signicant support for this conclusion. However, there are some
proposed solutions to the problem of hallucination that have been overlooked as potential
solutions to the problem of empty names, and this realization opens new non-relational
approaches to the problem of empty names, and to the nature of meaning more generally.
In chapter three, titled "Intensionality is Additional Phrasal Unity", I argue for a novel
approach to the semantics of intensional contexts. At the heart of my proposal is the
Quinean view that intensional contexts should, from the perspective of the semantics, be
treated as units, with the material in them contributing to the formation of a single predicate.
However, this proposal is subject to a number of objections, including the criticism
that taken at face value, this would render intensional contexts, which seem to be fully
productive, non-compositional. I begin by discussing the concept of the unity of the phrase,
and pointing to various ways that phrases can gain additional unity. I then proposes that
the intensionality of intensional transitive verbs is best construed as a form of semantic
incorporation; ITVs, on their intensional readings, meet all of the criteria for qualifying
as incorporating the nominals in their object positions. I then give a semantics for ITVs
that builds on existing views of the semantics of incorporation structures, and gesture at
how this can be extended to intensional clausal verbs, including the so-called propositional
attitude verbs
Indefiniteness and Specificity in Old Italian Texts
Object of this study is the marking of nominal indefiniteness in Old Italian, more precisely Old Tuscan texts, in three collections of novellas
Qualities, objects, sorts, and other treasures : gold digging in English and Arabic
In the present monograph, we will deal with questions of lexical typology in the nominal domain. By the term "lexical typology in the nominal domain", we refer to crosslinguistic regularities in the interaction between (a) those areas of the lexicon whose elements are capable of being used in the construction of "referring phrases" or "terms" and (b) the grammatical patterns in which these elements are involved. In the traditional analyses of a language such as English, such phrases are called "nominal phrases". In the study of the lexical aspects of the relevant domain, however, we will not confine ourselves to the investigation of "nouns" and "pronouns" but intend to take into consideration all those parts of speech which systematically alternate with nouns, either as heads or as modifiers of nominal phrases. In particular, this holds true for adjectives both in English and in other Standard European Languages. It is well known that adjectives are often difficult to distinguish from nouns, or that elements with an overt adjectival marker are used interchangeably with nouns, especially in particular semantic fields such as those denoting MATERIALS or NATlONALlTIES. That is, throughout this work the expression "lexical typology in the nominal domain" should not be interpreted as "a typology of nouns", but, rather, as the cross-linguistic investigation of lexical areas constitutive for "referring phrases" irrespective of how the parts-of-speech system in a specific language is defined
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