13,661 research outputs found
Text as scene: discourse deixis and bridging relations
En este artĂculo se presenta un nuevo marco, “el texto como escena”, que establece
las bases para la anotaciĂłn de dos relaciones de correferencia: la deixis discursiva y las
relaciones de bridging. La incorporaciĂłn de lo que llamamos escenas textuales y contextuales
proporciona unas directrices de anotación más flexibles, que diferencian claramente entre tipos
de categorĂas generales. Un marco como Ă©ste, capaz de tratar la deixis discursiva y las
relaciones de bridging desde una perspectiva comĂşn, tiene como objetivo mejorar el bajo grado
de acuerdo entre anotadores obtenido por esquemas de anotaciĂłn anteriores, que son incapaces
de captar las referencias vagas inherentes a estos dos tipos de relaciones. Las directrices aquĂ
presentadas completan el esquema de anotación diseñado para enriquecer el corpus español
CESS-ECE con información correferencial y asà construir el corpus CESS-Ancora.This paper presents a new framework, “text as scene”, which lays the foundations for
the annotation of two coreferential links: discourse deixis and bridging relations. The
incorporation of what we call textual and contextual scenes provides more flexible annotation
guidelines, broad type categories being clearly differentiated. Such a framework that is capable
of dealing with discourse deixis and bridging relations from a common perspective aims at
improving the poor reliability scores obtained by previous annotation schemes, which fail to
capture the vague references inherent in both these links. The guidelines presented here
complete the annotation scheme designed to enrich the Spanish CESS-ECE corpus with
coreference information, thus building the CESS-Ancora corpus.This paper has been supported by the FPU
grant (AP2006-00994) from the Spanish
Ministry of Education and Science. It is based
on work supported by the CESS-ECE
(HUM2004-21127), Lang2World (TIN2006-
15265-C06-06), and Praxem (HUM2006-
27378-E) projects
Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fĂĽr 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 fĂĽr 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
Properhood
A history of the notion of PROPERHOOD in philosophy and linguistics is given. Two long-standing ideas, (i) that proper names have no sense, and (ii) that they are expressions whose purpose is to refer to individuals, cannot be made to work comprehensively while PROPER is understood as a subcategory of linguistic units, whether of lexemes or phrases. Phrases of the type the old vicarage, which are potentially ambiguous with regard to properhood, encourage the suggestion that PROPER is best understood as mode of reference contrasting with SEMANTIC reference; in the former, the intension/sense of any lexical items within the referring expression, and any entailments they give rise to, are canceled. PROPER NAMES are all those expressions that refer nonintensionally. Linguistic evidence is given that this opposition can be grammaticalized, speculation is made about its neurological basis, and psycholinguistic evidence is adduced in support. The PROPER NOUN,asa lexical category, is argued to be epiphenomenal on proper names as newly defined. Some consequences of the view that proper names have no sense in the act of reference are explored; they are not debarred from having senses (better: synchronic etymologies) accessible during other (meta)linguistic activities
Definiteness across languages
Definiteness has been a central topic in theoretical semantics since its modern foundation. However, despite its significance, there has been surprisingly scarce research on its cross-linguistic expression. With the purpose of contributing to filling this gap, the present volume gathers thirteen studies exploiting insights from formal semantics and syntax, typological and language specific studies, and, crucially, semantic fieldwork and cross-linguistic semantics, in order to address the expression and interpretation of definiteness in a diverse group of languages, most of them understudied. The papers presented in this volume aim to establish a dialogue between theory and data in order to answer the following questions: What formal strategies do natural languages employ to encode definiteness? What are the possible meanings associated to this notion across languages? Are there different types of definite reference? Which other functions (besides marking definite reference) are associated with definite descriptions? Each of the papers contained in this volume addresses at least one of these questions and, in doing so, they aim to enrich our understanding of definiteness
Real-time grammar processing by native and non-native speakers : constructions unique to the second language
We investigated second language (L2) comprehension of grammatical structures that are unique to the L2, and which are known to cause persistent difficulties in production. A visual-world eye-tracking experiment focused on online comprehension of English articles by speakers of the article-lacking Mandarin, and a control group of English native speakers. The results show that non-native speakers from article-lacking backgrounds can incrementally utilise the information signalled by L2 articles in real time to constrain referential domains and resolve reference more efficiently. The findings support the hypothesis that L2 processing does not always over-rely on pragmatic affordances, and that some morphosyntactic structures unique to the target language can be processed in a targetlike manner in comprehension – despite persistent difficulties with their production. A novel proposal, based on multiple meaning-to-form, but consistent form-to-meaning mappings, is developed to account for such comprehension–production asymmetries
Using an ontology for guiding natural language interaction with knowledge based systems
Des dels anys 80, els sistemes basats en el coneixement, programes que utilitzen una gran quantitat de informaciĂł per modelar situacions i resoldre problemes, han adquirit gran importĂ ncia en el camp industrial, financer i cientĂfic. La complexitat d'aquests sistemes fa que el seu Ăşs presenti mĂ©s dificultats que altres aplicacions informĂ tiques. La comunicaciĂł entre els sistemes basats en el coneixement i l'usuari presenta, doncs, nous reptes. Tot i que el llenguate natural es especialment apropiat per comunicar-se amb aquests sistemes, sĂłn pocs els que incorporen interfĂcies en llenguatge natural. Els motius principals sĂłn els problemes d'eficiència que presenta el processament del llenguatge natural i l'elevat cost de desenvolupar les bases de coneixement (conceptual i lingĂĽĂstic) necessĂ ries per a cada aplicaciĂł. L'objectiu d'aquesta tesi Ă©s millorar la comunicaciĂł en llenguatge natural amb els sistemes basats en el coneixement. Aquesta recerca s'ha centrat en el disseny d'una representaciĂł reutilitzable dels diferents tipus de coneixement involucrats en aquesta comunicaciĂł, que permetir de generar de forma automĂ tica la interfĂcie mĂ©s adequada per a cada aplicaciĂł. S'ha desenvolupat un sistema, GISE (Generador de Interfaces a Sistemas Expertos), que genera interfĂcies en llenguatge natural per diferents tipus d'aplicacions. Aquest sistema adapta automĂ ticament les bases de coneixement lingĂĽĂstic generals als requeriments d'una aplicaciĂł concreta, obtenint la gramĂ tica mĂ©s apropiada. El disseny del sistema estĂ basat en una representaciĂł reutilitzable i modular dels diferents tipus de coneixement necessaris en la comunicaciĂł en llenguatge natural. Aquesta informaciĂł consisteix en els conceptes de l'aplicaciĂł, les tasques de comunicaciĂł, el coneixement lingĂĽĂstic i les relacions generals entre el coneixement conceptual i la seva realitzaciĂł lingĂĽĂstica. Tres bases de coneixement s'han dissenyat per representar aquesta informaciĂł: la ontologia conceptual, la ontologia lingĂĽĂstica i un conjunt de relges de producciĂł. El coneixement conceptual s'ha representat en la ontologia conceptual. Aquest coneixement inclou aspectes sobre el domini i la funcionalitat. Tota la informaciĂł necessĂ ria per modelar l'aplicaciĂł i tots els possibles actes de comunicaciĂł estan representats en la ontologia conceptual. La complexitat dels sistemes basats en el coneixement fa necessĂ ria una representaciĂł formal i explĂcita de la seva funcionalitat i domini.El coneixement lingĂĽĂstic general necessari per expressar en llenguatge natural les possibles tasques del sistema es representen en la ontologia lingĂĽĂstica.La informaciĂł que permet relacionar el coneixement lingĂĽĂstic general a una aplicaciĂł concreta per tal d'obtenir la gramĂ tica mĂ©s adequada es representada mitjançant un conjunt de regles de producciĂł.L'organitzaciĂł modular dels diferents tipus de coneixement que intervenen en la comunicaciĂł facilita l'adaptaciĂł del sistema a diferents tipus d'aplicacions i usuaris.Les gramĂ tiques generades pel sistema GISE utilitzen un llenguatge alhora ric i precĂs, adaptat a l'aplicaciĂł. La interfĂcie del sistema incorpora un sistema de finestres que guia a l'usuari a introduir les opcions en llenguatge natural que el sistema reconeix.GISE s'ha aplicat a diferents sistemes: a SIREDOJ, un sistema expert en lleis i a un sistema que dĂłna informaciĂł sobre trens.Since the 1980's, knowledge based systems (KBSs), programs that use knowledge to model situations and solve problems, have spread throughout industry, finance and science. Human communication with these systems deals with complex concepts and relationships that are not present in other software applications. Allthough the natural language (NL) is especially appropriate for expressing these concepts, there are not many KBSs incorporating NL interfaces. The main reasons for this are problems of efficiency in NLI performance, lack of adequacy to the communication needs of the applications and the high cost of developing and maintaining them.The aim of this thesis is to study how the communication process and engineering features can be improved in NL interaction with KBSs. This study has been focused on the efficient and reusable representation of the knowledge involved in NL communication with KBSs. GISE (Generador de Interfaces a Sistemas Expertos), a system supporting NL communication with KBSs has been developed. This system adapts the general linguistic resources to application requirements in order to automatically obtain application-restricted grammars. The main issue of the system design is a separate and reusable representation of all types of knowledge involved in communication with KBSs. This knowledge consists of the application knowledge appearing in the communication, the tasks of communication, the linguistic knowledge supporting their expression and the general relationships between conceptual knowledge and its linguistic realization. Three general bases were designed to represent all this knowledge : the Conceptual Ontology (CO), the Linguistic Ontology (LO) and a set of control rules.Conceptual knowledge is represented in the CO. This conceptual knowledge includes domain and functionality issues. All knowledge required to model the applications as well as the description of all possible communication acts is provided in the CO. The CO is the skeleton for anchoring the domain and the functionality of the applications. The complexity of KBS performance makes a formal and explicit representation of their domain and functionality necessary. The general linguistic knowledge needed to cover the expression in NL of the tasks the system performs is represented by means of the LO and a set containing all possible realizations of the application terms. The LO is domain and application independent. The control information to relate the general linguistic knowledge to conceptual application knowledge in order to generate the application-restricted grammars is represented by a set of production rules. The modular organization of the relevant knowledge into separate data structures provides great flexibility for adapting the system to different types of applications and users.The grammars generated by GISE use expressive and precise language tuned to the application and adapted to the evolution of the communicative process. A menu-system to guide the user in introducing the NL is integrated into the GISE interface. GISE has been applied to a couple of applications: SIREDOJ, an ES in law and a railway communication system
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