Lexical relatedness and the lexical entry - a formal unification

Based on the notion of a lexicon with default inheritance, I address the problem of how to provide a template for lexical representations that allows us to capture the relatedness between inflected word forms and canonically derived lexemes within a broadly realizational-inferential model of morphology. To achieve this we need to be able to represent a whole host of intermediate types of lexical relatedness that are much less frequently discussed in the literature. These include transpositions such as deverbal participles, in which a word's morphosyntactic class changes (e.g. verb ⇒ adjective) but no semantic predicate is added to the semantic representation and the derived word remains, in an important sense, a "form" of the base lexeme (e.g. the 'present participle form of the verb'). I propose a model in which morphological properties are inherited by default from syntactic properties and syntactic properties are inherited from semantic properties, such as ontological category (the Default Cascade). Relatedness is defined in terms of a Generalized Paradigm Function (perhaps in reality a relation), a generalization of the Paradigm Function of Paradigm Function Morphology (Stump 2001). The GPF has four components which deliver respectively specifications of a morphological form, syntactic properties, semantic representation and a lexemic index (LI) unique to each individuated lexeme in the lexicon. In principle, therefore, the same function delivers derived lexemes as inflected forms. In order to ensure that a newly derived lexeme of a distinct word class can be inflected I assume two additional principles. First, I assume an Inflectional Specifiability Principle, which states that the form component of the GPF (which defines inflected word forms of a lexeme) is dependent on the specification of the lexeme's morpholexical signature, a declaration of the properties that the lexeme is obliged to inflect for (defined by default on the basis of morpholexical class). I then propose a Category Erasure Principle, which states that 'lower' attributes are erased when the GPF introduces a non-trivial change to a 'higher' attribute (e.g. a change to the semantic representation entails erasure of syntactic and morphological information). The required information is then provided by the Default Cascade, unless overridden by specific declarations in the GPF. I show how this model can account for a variety of intermediate types of relatedness which cannot easily be treated as either inflection or derivation, and conclude with a detailed illustration of how the system applies to a particularly interesting type of transposition in the Samoyedic language Sel'kup, in which a noun is transposed to a similitudinal adjective whose form is in paradigmatic opposition to case-marked noun forms, and which is therefore a kind of inflection

A one-valued logic for non-one-sidedness

Does it make sense to employ modern logical tools for ancient philosophy? This well-known debate2 has been re-launched by the indologist Piotr Balcerowicz, questioning those who want to look at the Eastern school of Jainism with Western glasses. While plainly acknowledging the legitimacy of Balcerowicz's mistrust, the present paper wants to propose a formal reconstruction of one of the well-known parts of the Jaina philosophy, namely: the saptabhangi, i.e. the theory of sevenfold predication. Before arguing for this formalist approach to philosophy, let us return to the reasons to be reluctant at it

Pattern matching in compilers

In this thesis we develop tools for effective and flexible pattern matching. We introduce a new pattern matching system called amethyst. Amethyst is not only a generator of parsers of programming languages, but can also serve as an alternative to tools for matching regular expressions. Our framework also produces dynamic parsers. Its intended use is in the context of IDE (accurate syntax highlighting and error detection on the fly). Amethyst offers pattern matching of general data structures. This makes it a useful tool for implementing compiler optimizations such as constant folding, instruction scheduling, and dataflow analysis in general. The parsers produced are essentially top-down parsers. Linear time complexity is obtained by introducing the novel notion of structured grammars and regularized regular expressions. Amethyst uses techniques known from compiler optimizations to produce effective parsers.Comment: master thesi

Interpreting agreement: Evidence from Japanese object honorifics

Agree is commonly considered to have no semantic effects (Chomsky 2000, 2001 a.o.). However, based on the behaviors of the Japanese object honorific (OH) construction, this work claims that Agree can affect interpretation in such a way that its result feeds a semantic predicate. This claim is based on two observations regarding OH. First, I examine a theoretically overlooked observation that OH is felicitous only when the object referent is honored by the subject referent as well as the speaker. I show that this observation suggests that the head responsible for the OH marking induces the interpretation that the subject and the speaker honor the object. Second, I examine the distribution of the honoree in OH and argue that the head responsible for OH marking accesses the object via Agree, in line with previous theoretical studies (Niinuma 2003; Boeckx & Niinuma 2004). I account for both observations by proposing that the honorific head serves as a semantic predicate honor, which finds its arguments via Agree

In search of meta-knowledge

Development of an Intelligent Information System (IIS) involves application of numerous artificial intelligence (AI) paradigms and advanced technologies. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is interested in an IIS that can automatically collect, classify, store and retrieve data, as well as develop, manipulate and restructure knowledge regarding the data and its application (Campbell et al., 1987, p.3). This interest stems in part from a NASA initiative in support of the interagency Global Change Research program. NASA's space data problems are so large and varied that scientific researchers will find it almost impossible to access the most suitable information from a software system if meta-information (metadata and meta-knowledge) is not embedded in that system. Even if more, faster, larger hardware is used, new innovative software systems will be required to organize, link, maintain, and properly archive the Earth Observing System (EOS) data that is to be stored and distributed by the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) (Dozier, 1990). Although efforts are being made to specify the metadata that will be used in EOSDIS, meta-knowledge specification issues are not clear. With the expectation that EOSDIS might evolve into an IIS, this paper presents certain ideas on the concept of meta-knowledge and demonstrates how meta-knowledge might be represented in a pixel classification problem

Mixing and blending syntactic and semantic dependencies

Our system for the CoNLL 2008 shared task uses a set of individual parsers, a set of stand-alone semantic role labellers, and a joint system for parsing and semantic role labelling, all blended together. The system achieved a macro averaged labelled F1- score of 79.79 (WSJ 80.92, Brown 70.49) for the overall task. The labelled attachment score for syntactic dependencies was 86.63 (WSJ 87.36, Brown 80.77) and the labelled F1-score for semantic dependencies was 72.94 (WSJ 74.47, Brown 60.18)

Semantic Predicate Types and Approximation for Class-based Object Oriented Programming

We apply the principles of the intersection type discipline to the study of class-based object oriented programs and; our work follows from a similar approach (in the context of Abadi and Cardelli's Varsigma-object calculus) taken by van Bakel and de'Liguoro. We define an extension of Featherweight Java, FJc and present a predicate system which we show to be sound and expressive. We also show that our system provides a semantic underpinning for the object oriented paradigm by generalising the concept of approximant from the Lambda Calculus and demonstrating an approximation result: all expressions to which we can assign a predicate have an approximant that satisfies the same predicate. Crucial to this result is the notion of predicate language, which associates a family of predicates with a class.Comment: Proceedings of 11th Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs (FTfJP'09), Genova, Italy, July 6 200

Dictionaries for Language Generation Accounting for Co-occurrence Knowledge

Many wording choices in English sentences cannot be accounted for on semantic or syntactic grounds. They can only be expressed in terms of co-occurrence relations. Co-occurrence knowledge has been traditionally overlooked in the past, but should be included in lexicons as it is an inherent part of the language. In this paper, we demonstrate the importance of co-occurrence knowledge for language generation and we show how to include it in computational dictionaries. Using co-occurrence knowledge in the dictionary provides the generator with the information necessary for handling many lexical decisions that were previously ignored. We focus here on the process of building the dictionary, and we show how co-occurrence knowledge can be systematically entered in lexicons. Lexical relations are first identified by a co-occurrence compiler, EXTRACT. Then, domain specific semantic information is used as a criterion for classifying them. We exemplify our approach in the banking domain and we explain how it can be used by a natural language generator