Definiteness-indefiniteness category and logical quantification

Definiteness-indefiniteness category and logical quantificationThis work has been written within the “Logic and Language” project, realized under a cooperation agreement between the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Bulgarian Language of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The publication of a many-volume Bulgarian Polish Grammar (12 monographs), and of a Polish-Bulgarian Contrastive Grammar, from now on: Synthesis, is completed. Theories of mathematical logic are satisfied in perfect way in a natural language, which is shown by our understanding of the semantic definiteness / indefiniteness category as a system of scope-based quantification notions. A natural language complements and modifies logical theories. For example, understanding of the definiteness / indefiniteness category as a sentence category follows from the language material, especially in article languages. In such languages, quantification of the predicate is a necessary prerequisite for interpretation. Also introduction of the notions of strong and weak quantification meanings is motivated, for example, by the need to distinguish between the meanings of expressions like Pol. pewien x, jakiś x / Bulg. njakoj x, njakakyv x on the nominal phrase level, and by understanding of the ambiguity of quantification expressions like Bulg. vinagi, ponjakoga / Pol. zawsze, czasami. The fact of treating the definiteness / indefiniteness category as a sentence category expands understanding of the incomplete quantification notion also with respect to the verbal phrase, rather than, as in Ajdukiewicz’s approach, with respect to the nominal phrase only. Similarly, a proper name in a natural language is not a unique name, like in mathematical logic, but requires additional unique quantification. A network-based description of time is the first attempt at this type of description in the subject literature. In the present article, I stress that fact that quantification of states and events understood as in Petri net theory reveals the dependence between the aspectual and temporal meanings of verb, and proves that the information on time and aspect need not be dealt with separately

About Certain Semantic Annotation in Parallel Corpora

About Certain Semantic Annotation in Parallel CorporaThe semantic notation analyzed in this works is contained in the second stream of semantic theories presented here – in the direct approach semantics. We used this stream in our work on the Bulgarian-Polish Contrastive Grammar. Our semantic notation distinguishes quantificational meanings of names and predicates, and indicates aspectual and temporal meanings of verbs. It relies on logical scope-based quantification and on the contemporary theory of processes, known as “Petri nets”. Thanks to it, we can distinguish precisely between a language form and its contents, e.g. a perfective verb form has two meanings: an event or a sequence of events and states, finally ended with an event. An imperfective verb form also has two meanings: a state or a sequence of states and events, finally ended with a state. In turn, names are quantified universally or existentially when they are “undefined”, and uniquely (using the iota operator) when they are “defined”. A fact worth emphasizing is the possibility of quantifying not only names, but also the predicate, and then quantification concerns time and aspect.  This is a novum in elaborating sentence-level semantics in parallel corpora. For this reason, our semantic notation is manual. We are hoping that it will raise the interest of computer scientists working on automatic methods for processing the given natural languages. Semantic annotation defined like in this work will facilitate contrastive studies of natural languages, and this in turn will verify the results of those studies, and will certainly facilitate human and machine translations

Wielotomowa gramatyka konfrontatywna języka bułgarskiego i polskiego

Multi-volume Polish-Bulgarian Confrontative GrammarPolish-Bulgarian Confrontative Grammar (GKBP) is the first and so far the only expanded attempt to make the semantic confrontation with the gradually developed interlanguage. GKBP consists of 9 volumes which were published in 12 volumen. It was decided to arrange the description of Polish-Bulgarian confrontative grammar in the direction from the contents to the form. The semantic interlanguage enabled the emergence of two equivalent grammars: the grammar of the modern Bulgarian language and the grammar of the modern Polish language. The analysis of semantic categories, which was applied in GKBP, ensures the coherent confrontative description, irrespective of whether the described languages have grammatical exponent of meanings or not. GKBP falls into the stream of modern theoretical confrontative research based on the logical theory of quantification, on the modern theory of processes titled „Petri nets”, and on the theory of logical predicate-argument structures. Our research removes the exact division into grammatical and lexical levels, thanks to which our research has introduced a lot of new observations of the examined phenomena. Universal semantic linguistic categories such as the time, the modality, the definiteness / the indefiniteness and the semantic case – which are essential for the language description, but have not yet been examined and have not been sufficiently described in the academic grammars of the Polish and Bulgarian languages – have been selected. The sequence of description in this synthesis was established not on the basis of order of developed volumes of GKBP, but on the basis of the generally accepted order of elements of the semantic structure of the sentence. The most external in the semantic structure of the sentence is its modal characteristics. Thereafter, the time, quantifiers and their order in the semantic structure of the sentence as well as the predicate-argument items are placed. Therefore, it is not an abbreviated summary of the issues analyzed in GKBP volumes. It is the description of selected semantic categories organized in accordance with the semantic order of the semantic structure of the Polish and Bulgarian sentences

Dialog between a Lexicographer and a Translator

Dialog between a Lexicographer and a TranslatorThe discussion between the authors of the paper concerns the most pressing issues encountered in natural language semantics, as well as in corpus linguistics and computational linguistics. A broad range of knowledge, allowing linguists and information scientists to work together, is required in these areas. The paper describes some primary problems of human and machine translation caused by gaps between different fields of knowledge. The authors suggest that interdisciplinary approach is required when it comes to contrastive studies in linguistics

Bulgarian-Polish parallel digital corpus and quantification of time

Bulgarian-Polish parallel digital corpus and quantification of timeThe paper presents the current state of the first Bulgarian-Polish parallel and aligned corpus, prepared in the frame of the joint research project “Semantics and Contrastive linguistics with a focus on a bilingual electronic dictionary” between the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, coordinated by L. Dimitrova and V. Koseska-Toszewa. In particular, problems related to tense quantification are also discusse

Constructing catalogue of temporal situations

Constructing catalogue of temporal situationsThe paper is aiming to create a common basis for description, comparing, and analysis natural languages. As a subject of comparison we have chosen temporal structures of some languages. For such a choice there exists a perfect tool, describing basic temporal phenomena, namely an ordering of states and events in time, certainty and uncertainty, independency of histories of separate objects, necessity and possibility. This tool is supported by the Petri nets formalism, which seems to be well suited for expressing the above mentioned phenomena. Petri nets are built form three primitive notions: of states, of events that begin or end the states, and so-called flow relation indicating succession of states and events. This simple constituents give rise to many possibilities of representing temporal phenomena; it turns out that such representations are sufficient for many (clearly, not necessarily all) temporal situations appearing in natural languages.In description formalisms used till now there is no possibility of expressing such reality phenomena as temporal dependencies in compound statement, or combination of temporality and modality. Moreover, using these formalisms one cannot distinguish between two different sources of uncertainty of the speaker while describing the reality: one, due to the lack of knowledge of the speaker what is going on in outside world, the second, due to objective impossibility of foreseen ways in which some conflict situations will be (or already have been) resolved. Petri net formalism seems to be perfectly suited for such differentiations.There are two main description principles that encompassed this paper. First, that assigns meaning to names of grammatical structures in different languages may lead to misunderstanding. Two grammatical structures with apparently close names may describe different reality. Additionally, some grammatical terms used in one language may be absent and not understandable in the other. It leads to assign meanings to situations, rather than to linguistic forms used for their expression. The second principle is limit the discussed issues to such a piece of reality that can be possible for precise description. The third is to avoid introducing such information to the described reality that is not explicitly mentioned by linguistic means. The authors try to following these principles in the present paper.The paper is organized as follows. First, some samples of situations related to present tense are given together with examples of their expressions in four languages: English, (as a reference language) and three Slavic languages, representing South slavonic languages (Bulgarian), West slavonic languages (Polish), and East slavonic languages (Russian). Within the same framework the next parts of the paper are constructed, supplying samples of using Past tenses and, finally, future tenses and modalities.The formal tools for description purposes are introduced stepwise, according to needs caused be the described reality. There are mainly Petri nets, equipped additionally with inscriptions or labeling in order to keep proper assignations of description units to described objects

Contrastive Grammar of Serbo-Croatian and Polish Language an Methodological Aspect

The authors of this text are representatives of a group of Polish language experts. They are working out a contrastive giammar of Serbo- -Croatian and Polish language. The reason of group's choice of this new method of contrastive analysis, which hitherto hasn't been used in Slavic studies, is explained in the text. Describing the advantages of the chosen method, the authors point out some important problems which they met during their vork. The presentation of principles, according to which the analysis of linguistic material is made, is richly exemplified