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

References to graphical objects in interactive multimodel queries

This thesis describes a computational model for interpreting natural language expressions in an interactive multimodal query system integrating both natural language text and graphic displays. The primary concern of the model is to interpret expressions that might involve graphical attributes, and expressions whose referents could be objects on the screen.Graphical objects on the screen are used to visualise entities in the application domain and their attributes (in short, domain entities and domain attributes). This is why graphical objects are treated as descriptions of those domain entities/attributes in the literature. However, graphical objects and their attributes are visible during the interaction, and are thus known by the participants of the interaction. Therefore, they themselves should be part of the mutual knowledge of the interaction.This poses some interesting problems in language processing. As part of the mutual knowledge, graphical attributes could be used in expressions, and graphical objects could be referred to by expressions. In consequence, there could be ambiguities about whether an attribute in an expression belongs to a graphical object or to a domain entity. There could also be ambiguities about whether the referent of an expression is a graphical object or a domain entity.The main contributions of this thesis consist of analysing the above ambiguities, de¬ signing, implementing and testing a computational model and a demonstration system for resolving these ambiguities. Firstly, a structure and corresponding terminology are set up, so these ambiguities can be clarified as ambiguities derived from referring to different databases, the screen or the application domain (source ambiguities). Secondly, a meaning representation language is designed which explicitly represents the information about which database an attribute/entity comes from. Several linguistic regularities inside and among referring expressions are described so that they can be used as heuristics in the ambiguity resolution. Thirdly, a computational model based on constraint satisfaction is constructed to resolve simultaneously some reference ambiguities and source ambiguities. Then, a demonstration system integrating natural language text and graphics is implemented, whose core is the computational model.This thesis ends with an evaluation of the computational model. It provides some concrete evidence about the advantages and disadvantages of the above approach

Context Dependence and Procedural Meaning: The Semantics of Definites

This thesis argues that there is a theoretically interesting connection between members of the intuitive category of context-dependent expressions, including "we", "tall", "local", "every man", "the woman", "it", "those donkeys" and so on. A treatment of the linguistic meaning of these expressions will be proposed based on the idea that their use raises issues for the audience about the proper understanding of the utterances in which they occur. The proposal will be developed in terms of a semantics for questions, which draws on the idea that to know the meaning of a question is to know what would count as an answer. It can be summarised along similar lines: to know the meaning of a context-dependent expression is to know what properties or relations (of the appropriate type) it could be used to express. The framework in which this idea will be developed can account for why the expressions that are given this issue-based treatment can also be given dependent, bound readings. The class of definite expressions, including descriptions and pronouns, is analysed in detail. A quantificational approach, where the determiner is existential, is assumed for all forms of definiteness. In all cases, the restrictor is interpreted by an atomic definite concept. The audience's grasp of the properties which definite concepts express is the result of inferential processes which take the linguistic meaning of a definite expression as input. These processes are constrained by pragmatic principles. The analysis of context-dependent expressions is extended to account for dependent interpretations. A treatment of donkey sentences that accounts for their variable quantificational force is shown to follow naturally from the analysis. A pragmatic account of infelicitous uses of definites is provided and shown to compare favourably with that provided by dynamic semantic theories. Also, a novel treatment of plural definites is provided which accounts for their variable quantificational force

Natural Language Processing

The subject of Natural Language Processing can be considered in both broad and narrow senses. In the broad sense, it covers processing issues at all levels of natural language understanding, including speech recognition, syntactic and semantic analysis of sentences, reference to the discourse context (including anaphora, inference of referents, and more extended relations of discourse coherence and narrative structure), conversational inference and implicature, and discourse planning and generation. In the narrower sense, it covers the syntactic and semantic processing sentences to deliver semantic objects suitable for referring, inferring, and the like. Of course, the results of inference and reference may under some circumstances play a part in processing in the narrow sense. But the processes that are characteristic of these other modules are not the primary concern

Linear and Affine Typing of Continuation-Passing Style

Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Queen Mary, University of Londo

Negotiating Tradition - The pragmatics of international deliberations on Cultural Property

Communicative interactions in international negotiations on cultural property not only provide information about the emergence and proliferation of arguments, rhetorics, and registers, but also permit valuable insights into actors’ positions, strategies and alliances. They significantly influence local and national practices and views related to cultural property debates. What can be gained from a deep analysis of the communicative patterns and strategies that actors engage in – the entailing text and talk of negotiations – is a better understanding of the process itself: how do different actors argue, what kind of strategies and rhetorics do they use, to which instruments and institutions do they refer, and in what way do actors react to each other? An analysis of communicative interactions contributes to the question of how international negotiations work. The analytic inclusion of sociolinguistic practices allows insights into positions, strategies, and perspectives pertaining to cultural property. By looking at not only what actors say, but also at how and in what contexts they do so, it is possible to make more accurate statements about their positions and perceptions in cultural property debates. As these communicative interactions influence outcomes considerably, an approach from linguistic anthropology is not only beneficial for an understanding of specific negotiations, but also for the analysis of broader cultural property issues.Communicative interactions in international negotiations on cultural property not only provide information about the emergence and proliferation of arguments, rhetorics, and registers, but also permit valuable insights into actors’ positions, strategies and alliances. They significantly influence local and national practices and views related to cultural property debates. What can be gained from a deep analysis of the communicative patterns and strategies that actors engage in – the entailing text and talk of negotiations – is a better understanding of the process itself: how do different actors argue, what kind of strategies and rhetorics do they use, to which instruments and institutions do they refer, and in what way do actors react to each other? An analysis of communicative interactions contributes to the question of how international negotiations work. The analytic inclusion of sociolinguistic practices allows insights into positions, strategies, and perspectives pertaining to cultural property. By looking at not only what actors say, but also at how and in what contexts they do so, it is possible to make more accurate statements about their positions and perceptions in cultural property debates. As these communicative interactions influence outcomes considerably, an approach from linguistic anthropology is not only beneficial for an understanding of specific negotiations, but also for the analysis of broader cultural property issues

A perceptually based computational framework for the interpretation of spatial language

The goal of this work is to develop a semantic framework to underpin the development of natural language (NL) interfaces for 3 Dimensional (3-D) simulated environments. The thesis of this work is that the computational interpretation of language in such environments should be based on a framework that integrates a model of visual perception with a model of discourse. When interacting with a 3-D environment, users have two main goals the first is to move around in the simulated environment and the second is to manipulate objects in the environment. In order to interact with an object through language, users need to be able to refer to the object. There are many different types of referring expressions including definite descriptions, pronominals, demonstratives, one-anaphora, other-expressions, and locative-expressions Some of these expressions are anaphoric (e g , pronominals, oneanaphora, other-expressions). In order to computationally interpret these, it is necessary to develop, and implement, a discourse model. Interpreting locative expressions requires a semantic model for prepositions and a mechanism for selecting the user’s intended frame of reference. Finally, many of these expressions presuppose a visual context. In order to interpret them this context must be modelled and utilised. This thesis develops a perceptually grounded discourse-based computational model of reference resolution capable of handling anaphoric and locative expressions. There are three novel contributions in this framework a visual saliency algorithm, a semantic model for locative expressions containing projective prepositions, and a discourse model. The visual saliency algorithm grades the prominence of the objects in the user's view volume at each frame. This algorithm is based on the assumption that objects which are larger and more central to the user's view are more prominent than objects which are smaller or on the periphery of their view. The resulting saliency ratings for each frame are stored in a data structure linked to the NL system’s context model. This approach gives the system a visual memory that may be drawn upon in order to resolve references. The semantic model for locative expressions defines a computational algorithm for interpreting locatives that contain a projective preposition. Specifically, the prepositions in front of behind, to the right of, and to the left of. There are several novel components within this model. First, there is a procedure for handling the issue of frame of reference selection. Second, there is an algorithm for modelling the spatial templates of projective prepositions. This algonthm integrates a topological model with visual perceptual cues. This approach allows us to correctly define the regions described by projective preposition in the viewer-centred frame of reference, in situations that previous models (Yamada 1993, Gapp 1994a, Olivier et al 1994, Fuhr et al 1998) have found problematic. Thirdly, the abstraction used to represent the candidate trajectors of a locative expression ensures that each candidate is ascribed the highest rating possible. This approach guarantees that the candidate trajector that occupies the location with the highest applicability in the prepositions spatial template is selected as the locative’s referent. The context model extends the work of Salmon-Alt and Romary (2001) by integrating the perceptual information created by the visual saliency algonthm with a model of discourse. Moreover, the context model defines an interpretation process that provides an explicit account of how the visual and linguistic information sources are utilised when attributing a referent to a nominal expression. It is important to note that the context model provides the set of candidate referents and candidate trajectors for the locative expression interpretation algorithm. These are restncted to those objects that the user has seen. The thesis shows that visual salience provides a qualitative control in NL interpretation for 3-D simulated environments and captures interesting and significant effects such as graded judgments. Moreover, it provides an account for how object occlusion impacts on the semantics of projective prepositions that are canonically aligned with the front-back axis in the viewer-centred frame of reference

Negotiating Tradition - The pragmatics of international deliberations on Cultural Property

Communicative interactions in international negotiations on cultural property not only provide information about the emergence and proliferation of arguments, rhetorics, and registers, but also permit valuable insights into actors’ positions, strategies and alliances. They significantly influence local and national practices and views related to cultural property debates. What can be gained from a deep analysis of the communicative patterns and strategies that actors engage in – the entailing text and talk of negotiations – is a better understanding of the process itself: how do different actors argue, what kind of strategies and rhetorics do they use, to which instruments and institutions do they refer, and in what way do actors react to each other? An analysis of communicative interactions contributes to the question of how international negotiations work. The analytic inclusion of sociolinguistic practices allows insights into positions, strategies, and perspectives pertaining to cultural property. By looking at not only what actors say, but also at how and in what contexts they do so, it is possible to make more accurate statements about their positions and perceptions in cultural property debates. As these communicative interactions influence outcomes considerably, an approach from linguistic anthropology is not only beneficial for an understanding of specific negotiations, but also for the analysis of broader cultural property issues

On Utterance Interpretation and Metalinguistic-Semantic Competence

This study explores the role of what I call metalinguistic-semantic competence (MSC) in the processes of utterance interpretation, and in some cases expression interpretation. MSC is so-called because it is grounded in a speaker's explicit knowledge of (or beliefs about) the lexically-encoded meanings of individual words. More specifically, MSC derives, in part, from having concepts of words--or conceptsW as I distinguish them--whose representational contents, I propose, are corresponding items in a speaker's mental lexicon. The leading idea is that once acquired speakers use their conceptsW to form explicit beliefs about the meanings of words in terms of which extralinguistic concepts those words can (and cannot) coherently be used to express in ordinary conversational situations as constrained by their linguistically-encoded meanings. Or to put the claim differently, I argue that a speaker's explicit conception of word-meanings is a direct conscious reflection of his/her tacit understanding of the various ways in which lexical meanings guide and constrain without fully determining what their host words can (and cannot) be used/uttered to talk about in ordinary discourse. Such metalinguistic knowledge, I contend, quite often plays crucial role in our ability to correctly interpret what other speakers say. The first part of this work details the cognitive mechanisms underlying MSC against the backdrop of a Chomskyan framework for natural language and a Fodorian theory of concepts and their representational contents. The second part explores three ways that MSC might contribute to what I call a speaker's core linguisticsemantic competence. Specifically, I argue that MSC can help explain (i) how competent speakers acquire conceptually underspecified words with their lexical meanings, (ii) the contextual disambiguation of inherently polysemous words, and (iii) the informativeness of true natural language identity statements involving coreferential proper names. The philosophically relevant conclusion is that if any of these proposals pan out then MSC constitutes a proper explanandum of semantic theory, and hence any complete/adequate theory of semantic competence