Talking about trees and truth-conditions

We present Logical Description Grammar (LDG), a model of grammar and the syntax-semantics interface based on descriptions in elementary logic. A description may simultaneously describe the syntactic structure and the semantics of a natural language expression, i.e., the describing logic talks about the trees and about the truth-conditions of the language described. Logical Description Grammars offer a natural way of dealing with underspecification in natural language syntax and semantics. If a logical description (up to isomorphism) has exactly one tree plus truth-conditions as a model, it completely specifies that grammatical object. More common is the situation, corresponding to underspecification, in which there is more than one model. A situation in which there are no models corresponds to an ungrammatical input.

LexOnto: A Model for Ontology Lexicons for Ontology-based NLP

Cimiano P, Haase P, Herold M, Mantel M, Buitelaar P. LexOnto: A Model for Ontology Lexicons for Ontology-based NLP. In: Proceedings of the OntoLex07 Workshop held in conjunction with ISWC’07. 2007

Towards Foundational Semantics - Ontological Semantics Revisited -

Cimiano P, Reyle U. Towards Foundational Semantics - Ontological Semantics Revisited -. In: Bennett B, Fellbaum C, eds. Formal Ontology in Information Systems, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference, FOIS 2006. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 150. IOS Press; 2006: 51-62

Interaction Grammars

Interaction Grammar (IG) is a grammatical formalism based on the notion of polarity. Polarities express the resource sensitivity of natural languages by modelling the distinction between saturated and unsaturated syntactic structures. Syntactic composition is represented as a chemical reaction guided by the saturation of polarities. It is expressed in a model-theoretic framework where grammars are constraint systems using the notion of tree description and parsing appears as a process of building tree description models satisfying criteria of saturation and minimality

Talking about trees, scope and concepts

Cimiano P, Reyle U. Talking about trees, scope and concepts. In: Bunt H, Geertzen J, Thijse E, eds. Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS). 2005

Linear logic-based semantics construction for LTAG

In this paper we review existing appoaches to semantics construction in LTAG (Lexicalised Tree Adjoining Grammar) which are all based on the notion of derivation (tree)s. We argue that derivation structures in LTAG are not appropriate to guide semantic composition, due to a non-isomorphism, in LTAG, between the syntactic operation of adjunction on the one hand, and the semantic operations of complementation and modification, on the other. Linear Logic based “glue” semantics, by now the classical approach to semantics construction within the LFG framework (cf. Dalrymple (1999)) allows for flexible coupling of syntactic and semantic structure. We investigate application of “glue semantics” to LTAG syntax, using as underlying structure the derived tree, which is more appropriate for principle-based semantics construction. We show how linear logic semantics construction helps to bridge the non-isomorphism between syntactic and semantic operations in LTAG. The glue approach allows to capture non-tree local dependencies in control and modification structures, and extends to the treatment of scope ambiguity with quantified NPs and VP adverbials. Finally, glue semantics applies successfully to the adjunction-based analysis of long-distance dependencies in LTAG, which differs significantly from the f-structure based analysis in LFG

Descriptions d'arbres avec polarités : les Grammaires d'Interaction

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. nationale.National audienceNous présentons un nouveau formalisme linguistique, les Grammaires d'Interaction, dont les objets syntaxiques de base sont des descriptions d'arbres, c'est-à-dire des formules logiques spécifiant partiellement des arbres syntaxiques. Dans ce contexte, l'analyse syntaxique se traduit par la construction de modèles de descriptions sous la forme d'arbres syntaxiques complètement spécifiés. L'opération de composition syntaxique qui permet cette construction pas à pas est contrôlée par un système de traits polarisés agissant comme des charges électrostatiques