Database Semantics

For long-term upscaling, the computational reconstruction of a complex natural mechanism must be input-output equivalent with the prototype, i.e. the reconstruction must take the same input and produce the same output in the same processing order as the original. Accordingly, the modeling of natural language communication in Database Semantics (DBS) uses a time-linear derivation order for the speaker’s output and the hearer’s input. The language-dependent surfaces serving as the vehicle of content transfer from speaker to hearer are raw data without meaning or any grammatical properties whatsoever, but measurable by natural science

A Constructive Approach to Intensional Contexts : Remarks on the Metaphysics of Model Theory

The basic distinction between extensional and intensional contexts is one of different denotation conditions (truth conditions). This difference in denotation conditions has been related to a fundamental question of semantic theory, namely: what do expressions of natural 'language denote? Most authors assume that in ex tensional contexts expressions denote 'real objects.' Since the rules of substitutivity of identicals and existential generalization do not hold in intensional contexts (cf. section 1), they are thus forced to postulate that in intensional contexts expressions denote something else. Frege, for example, assumes a de notational ambiguity between 'Bedeutung' and 'Sinn', Russell between 'primary occurrences' and 'secondary occurrences', Quine between 'proper occurrences' and 'accidental occurrences', and Montague between 'extensions' and 'intensions

Natural Language Production in Database Semantics

Abstract. A theory of natural language production (speaker mode) has to answer the following questions: (i) Where does the content serving as input to language production come from? (ii) In which format is this relatively language-independent content stored, processed, and retrieved? and (iii) How is activated content mapped into well-formed surfaces of a certain natural language? After brief answers to (i) and (ii), this paper concentrates on (iii), illustrating the time-linear method of Database Semantics (DBS) on some of the most notorious grammatical constructions of natural language

Database Semantics for Natural Language

This paper presents a formal `fragment' of database semantics as a declarative model of a cognitive agent. It is called a SLIM machine and functionally integrates the procedures of natural language interpretation, conceptualization, and production as well as query and inference. Each of these functions is illustrated explicitly by a corresponding LA-grammar. In addition, a control structure based on the principle of balance is presented. This principle mediates between the knowledge of the SLIM machine and its current situation by selecting a suitable action. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved