Principle Based Semantics for HPSG

The paper presents a constraint based semantic formalism for HPSG. The advantages of the formlism are shown with respect to a grammar for a fragment of German that deals with (i) quantifier scope ambiguities triggered by scrambling and/or movement and (ii) ambiguities that arise from the collective/distributive distinction of plural NPs. The syntax-semantics interface directly implements syntactic conditions on quantifier scoping and distributivity. The construction of semantic representations is guided by general principles governing the interaction between syntax and semantics. Each of these principles acts as a constraint to narrow down the set of possible interpretations of a sentence. Meanings of ambiguous sentences are represented by single partial representations (so-called U(nderspecified) D(iscourse) R(epresentation) S(tructure)s) to which further constraints can be added monotonically to gain more information about the content of a sentence. There is no need to build up a large number of alternative representations of the sentence which are then filtered by subsequent discourse and world knowledge. The advantage of UDRSs is not only that they allow for monotonic incremental interpretation but also that they are equipped with truth conditions and a proof theory that allows for inferences to be drawn directly on structures where quantifier scope is not resolved

Co-Indexing Labelled DRSs to Represent and Reason with Ambiguities

The paper addresses the problem of representing ambiguities in a way that allows for monotonic disambiguation and for direct deductive computation. The paper focuses on an extension of the formalism of underspecified DRSs to ambiguities introduced by plural NPs. It deals with the collective/distributive distinction, and also with generic and cumulative readings. In addition it provides a systematic account for an underspecified treatment of plural pronoun resolution.Comment: gzipped ps-file. To appear in: Stanley Peters, Kees van Deemter (1995): Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification, CSLI Publications, Stanfor

Combining linguistic and statistical analysis to extract relations from web documents

Search engines, question answering systems and classification systems alike can greatly profit from formalized world knowledge. Unfortunately, manually compiled collections of world knowledge (such as WordNet or the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology SUMO) often suffer from low coverage, high assembling costs and fast aging. In contrast, the World Wide Web provides an endless source of knowledge, assembled by millions of people, updated constantly and available for free. In this paper, we propose a novel method for learning arbitrary binary relations from natural language Web documents, without human interaction. Our system, LEILA, combines linguistic analysis and machine learning techniques to find robust patterns in the text and to generalize them. For initialization, we only require a set of examples of the target relation and a set of counterexamples (e.g. from WordNet). The architecture consists of 3 stages: Finding patterns in the corpus based on the given examples, assessing the patterns based on probabilistic confidence, and applying the generalized patterns to propose pairs for the target relation. We prove the benefits and practical viability of our approach by extensive experiments, showing that LEILA achieves consistent improvements over existing comparable techniques (e.g. Snowball, TextToOnto)

The devices, experimental scaffolds, and biomaterials ontology (DEB): a tool for mapping, annotation, and analysis of biomaterials' data

The size and complexity of the biomaterials literature makes systematic data analysis an excruciating manual task. A practical solution is creating databases and information resources. Implant design and biomaterials research can greatly benefit from an open database for systematic data retrieval. Ontologies are pivotal to knowledge base creation, serving to represent and organize domain knowledge. To name but two examples, GO, the gene ontology, and CheBI, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest ontology and their associated databases are central resources to their respective research communities. The creation of the devices, experimental scaffolds, and biomaterials ontology (DEB), an open resource for organizing information about biomaterials, their design, manufacture, and biological testing, is described. It is developed using text analysis for identifying ontology terms from a biomaterials gold standard corpus, systematically curated to represent the domain's lexicon. Topics covered are validated by members of the biomaterials research community. The ontology may be used for searching terms, performing annotations for machine learning applications, standardized meta-data indexing, and other cross-disciplinary data exploitation. The input of the biomaterials community to this effort to create data-driven open-access research tools is encouraged and welcomed.Preprin

Transversality in Diversity: Experiencing Networks of Confusion and Convergence in the World Social Forum

Drawing on the World Social Forum as an exemplary case study, this article shows how an emerging mode of cosmopolitanist vision (‘transversalism’) can be explained in terms of activists’ experiences of both complexity and contradiction in their networks. The paper questions the idea that the transnationalization of networks of solidarity and interconnection can uncomplicatedly encourage the growth of cosmopolitanism among global justice activists. Activists’ experiences of dissonances between their ideals, the complexity of power relations and the structural uncertainties in their global justice networks can provide them with a base for self-reflexive ideation and deliberation, and thereby encourage agendas for accommodating differences. Underpinning the accommodating measures which arise for dealing with such a cognitive-practical dissonance is a new mode of cosmopolitanism, coined here as ‘transversalism’. The article proposes a new conceptual framework and an analytical model to investigate the complexity of this process more inclusively and systematically

A multi-level methodology for the automated translation of a coreference resolution dataset: an application to the Italian language

In the last decade, the demand for readily accessible corpora has touched all areas of natural language processing, including coreference resolution. However, it is one of the least considered sub-fields in recent developments. Moreover, almost all existing resources are only available for the English language. To overcome this lack, this work proposes a methodology to create a corpus for coreference resolution in Italian exploiting knowledge of annotated resources in other languages. Starting from OntonNotes, the methodology translates and refines English utterances to obtain utterances respecting Italian grammar, dealing with language-specific phenomena and preserving coreference and mentions. A quantitative and qualitative evaluation is performed to assess the well-formedness of generated utterances, considering readability, grammaticality, and acceptability indexes. The results have confirmed the effectiveness of the methodology in generating a good dataset for coreference resolution starting from an existing one. The goodness of the dataset is also assessed by training a coreference resolution model based on BERT language model, achieving the promising results. Even if the methodology has been tailored for English and Italian languages, it has a general basis easily extendable to other languages, adapting a small number of language-dependent rules to generalize most of the linguistic phenomena of the language under examination

Remarks on Modern Standard Arabic Construct State and Quantification

This thesis investigates the interpretations of genitive and quantificational forms that Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) unifies under a complex DP, namely Construct State (CS). Despite the linguistic differences between these phenomena, the PF form of this structure neutralizes all indicated types and their sub-types into a head-complement form (possessum-possessor or quantifier-domain restriction), where the whole structure’s definiteness is recovered from the complement that is distinguished for this value overtly. However, the internal syntactic and semantic components such as the source of relations and definiteness value of the whole structure that contribute to the CS its various interpretations are always concealed at PF. This neutralization makes it hard to view the differences between CS types as well as the causes of their various semantic ambiguities. This project analyzes Nominal and Quantificational CSs of MSA to uncover their hidden syntactic and semantic factors that distinguish their semantic contributions. To approach these two forms, this thesis consists of four main discussion chapters. Two of these chapters (2&3) are devoted to approach genitive nominals, and their syntactic and semantic aspects. Chapter (2) looks at (in)definiteness: marking, agreement (inheritance), and its interpretation on either component at LF. In this chapter, I argue that the Nominal-CS D head inherits its covert definiteness featural specifications from its complement whose definiteness is distinguished overtly. This inheritance takes place at the syntactic level via the operation of syntactic agreement (following Pesetsky and Torrego, 2007 framework) which feeds the semantic interpretations of this form, regardless of some exceptional cases for this inheritance. Chapter (3) investigates the semantic ambiguities of a nominal CS. One type of the ambiguities categorizes a CS as possessive vs. modificational CS based on the relation between the head and the complement. Fol-lowing Borer (2009), these interpretations are caused by the referentiality of the complement, which is associated with its syntactic category: a referential DP for the possessive type and non-referential NP for modificational type. Another ambiguity is caused by the relation between the nominals in the distinguished types contributed by Relator Phrase (RP) projection (cf. Den Dikken, 2006 and Ouhalla, 2011). The head of this projection denotes a free variable over contextual relations (possessiveness, agent, control, or other pragmatic relations) or its relation can be contributed lexically by the head noun when it is relational semantically. However, the lexical relation may or may not feed the RP projection depending on the context. Regarding the quantificational side of the investigation, it focuses on quantificational determiners and their domain restriction (DR) nouns that form the quantificational construct state (QCS), in addition to some notes about scope taking ambiguities. Chapter (4) approaches the quantifiers kul: “every/each or all” dʒami:ʔ “all” muʕðˤam “most” baʕdˤ “some” and their DR nouns in CS. All the former quantifiers are restricted by definite plural DPs without partitive preposition, except for the distributive interpretation of kul:. For the latter, it has to be restricted by an indefinite bare noun. Regarding these issues, this chapter argues that quantifiers of Arabic are not syntactic deter-miners since they are distinguished for (in)definiteness overtly in non-CS structure or covertly in QCS. The account that is drawn for the quantifiers with definite DR proposes that they are partitive quantifiers whose partitive relation is established by a null PartP (partitive phrase) (cf. Fehri, 2018). PartP allows them to quantify over parts of the individual sum denoted by their definite plural DR noun. On the other hand, the inherited definiteness on the quantifiers is semantically vacuous since the domain of quantification is restricted by the definiteness of DR noun. For the distributive interpretation of the universal kul: “every/each”, its DR is a bare NP whose number contributes the (non)atomic granularity for distributivity rather than categorizing it as indefinite since this language lacks the indefinite determiner. The following chapter shifts the discussion toward some notes on scope taking to examine the possibility of the covert inverse scope and inverse linking readings at LF in SVO and VSO word orders. For the inverse scope at clause-level, the findings of this chapter analysis suggest that the scope is fluid with respect to VSO order, while the SVO order shows some exceptions. The subject of SVO occurs in the left periphery as a topic or focus (Soltan, 2007; Albuhayri, 2019) where QR does not exceed (cf. May, 1977, 1985; Heim and Kratzer, 1998). Merely, a clitic left dislocated topic can freeze the scope by reserving wide scope interpretation, while a focused subject can show scope ambiguity due to its ability to reconstruct because it is a moved element to the left periphery. Regarding scope linking within DP, MSA allows this type of QR movement at LF, but, still, the left periphery boundary is respected

Prophetic Imagination in the Light of Narratology and Disability Studies in Isaiah 40–48

Analyzes Isaiah 40–48 as a single literary work through levels of speakers (frame and subordinate) with implications for its construction of divine potency and communication