this paper, I will discuss four major topics relating to current research in lexical semantics: methodology, descriptive coverage, adequacy of the representation, and the computational usefulness of representations. In addressing these issues, I will discuss what I think are some of the central problems facing the lexical semantics community, and suggest ways of best approaching these issues. Then, I will provide a method for the decomposition of lexical categories and outline a theory of lexical semantics embodying a notion of cocompositionality and type coercion, as well as several levels of semantic description, where the semantic load is spread more evenly throughout the lexicon. I argue that lexical decomposition is possible if it is performed generatively. Rather than assuming a fixed set of primitives, I will assume a fixed number of generative devices that can be seen as constructing semantic expressions. I develop a theory of Qualia Structure, a representation language for lexical items, which renders much lexical ambiguity in the lexicon unnecessary, while still explaining the systematic polysemy that words carry. Finally, I discuss how individual lexical structures can be integrated into the larger lexical knowledge base through a theory of lexical inheritance. This provides us with the necessary principles of global organization for the lexicon, enabling us to fully integrate our natural language lexicon into a conceptual whole

Contents 1 Introduction: grammatical reasoning 1 2 Linguistic inference: the Lambek systems 5 2.1 Modelinggrammaticalcomposition ............................ 5 2.2 Gentzen calculus, cut elimination and decidability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3 Discussion: options for resource management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3 The syntax-semantics interface: proofs and readings 16 3.1 Term assignment for categorial deductions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.2 Natural language interpretation: the deductive view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 4 Grammatical composition: multimodal systems 26 4.1 Mixedinference:themodesofcomposition........................ 26 4.2 Grammaticalcomposition:unaryoperations ....................... 30 4.2.1 Unary connectives: logic and structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4.2.2 Applications: imposing constraints, structural relaxation

Abstract not found

this paper I treat conditionals using material implication, ignoring the well-known semantic/pragmatic problems concerning their correct interpretation. Of course, one may doubt whether (7a), which is verified by any situation in which there is one woman who did not come to the party, reflects correctly the wide scope reading of the indefinite in (7). Obviously, this problem is independent of the scope problem of indefinites. For this reason and because antecedents of conditionals are one of the simplest and most striking cases of scope islands, I use such examples freely, counting on the reader to substitute her favorite theory of conditionals for material implication. This claim has been challenged in Farkas (1981), Rooth & Partee (1982:fn.6) and, more recently, in Ruys (1992) and Abusch (1994). These works all show cases where Fodor & Sag's claim is argued to be incorrect. The empirical debate will be reviewed later in this paper (subsection 3.4.2). Ruys and Abusch both conclude that Fodor & Sag's "referential" approach is inadequate. To handle the facts, Ruys proposes an indexing mechanism of indefinites within a DRT-like interpretation of LF. Abusch proposes to enrich DRT with a storage mechanism that changes the syntactic position of the N' predicate (= the restriction of the indefinite) at the representational level. Both Ruys and Abusch therefore accept the assumption of DRT about a distinct syntactic representational level for meaning. This level (sometimes called Logical Form') is additional to the syntactic level that undergoes semantic interpretation (GB's Logical Form, other theories' Surface Structure). Indefinites in Ruys and Abusch's treatments are not quantifiers. Instead, they involve the familiar treatment of DRT using free variables. I henceforth c...

I explore some of the issues that arise when trying to establish a connection between the underspecification hypothesis pursued in the NLP literature and work on ambiguity in semantics and in the psychological literature. A theory of underspecification is developed `from the first principles', i.e., starting from a definition of what it means for a sentence to be semantically ambiguous and from what we know about the way humans deal with ambiguity. An underspecified language is specified as the translation language of a grammar covering sentences that display three classes of semantic ambiguity: lexical ambiguity, scopal ambiguity, and referential ambiguity. The expressions of this language denote sets of senses. A formalization of defeasible reasoning with underspecified representations is presented, based on Default Logic. Some issues to be confronted by such a formalization are discussed. 1 The Combinatorial Explosion Puzzle The alternative syntactic readings of a sen...

This paper proposes that the meanings of some natural language expressions should be thought of as functions on their own continuations. Continuations are a well-established technique in the theory of programming language semantics; in brief, a continuation is the entire default future of a computation. I show how a continuation-based grammar can unify several aspects of natural language quantification in a new way: merely stating the truth conditions for quantificational expressions in terms of continuations automatically accounts for scope displacement and scope ambiguity. To prove this claim, I exhibit a simple finite context-free grammar with a strictly compositional semantics in which quantificational NPs are interpreted in-situ but take semantic scope over larger constituents. There is no Quantifier Raising (nor any use of a level of Logical Form distinct from overt syntax), no Cooper Storage (or other similar mechanisms used in many recent HPSG, Categorial, or Type-logical treatments), and no need for type-shifting (as in Hendriks' Flexible Types account). Continuations also provide a natural account of generalized coordination that does not require either type-shifting or type-polymorphism. Compositionality issues are discussed in some detail.

ver sets of atoms. We can describe these features using the notation Q and S. Flexibility operators shift meanings between the four kinds of denotations that these two features describe. The boolean theory of coordination The basic fact about coordination in many languages is its cross-categorial behaviour: morphemes like and and or can appear in coordinate structures of many dierent categories, as (partly) illustrated by the following simple sentences. (1) Mary sang and/or Sue danced. (2) Mary and/or Sue sang. (3) Mary sang and/or danced. Early versions of Transformational Grammar assumed that this property of coordination could be explained by assuming that at deep structure coordinators are sentential only, like the connectives of rst order logic. A Conjunction 1 Reduction transformation was assumed to relate phrasal coordinations

This thesis is an investigation of the representation of lexical semantic information from a computational linguistic perspective. An implemented representation language is described which is not specic to lexical semantics, but is based on the use of typed feature structures augmented with default operations. This language, which is formally specied, allows the lexical semantic representations to be tightly integrated with the syntactic component of the lexical sign, capturing generalisations by use of inheritance, while allowing for exceptions with the default mechanism. Default inheritance and default unication are discussed in detail. Grammar rules and lexical rules can be specied in the same formalism and thus the paradigmatic treatment of lexical semantics can be integrated with an account at the syntagmatic level. The use of the language is illustrated with some examples of the representation of verbs, the treatment of logical metonymy and of sense extension. This is followe...

This book deals with the semantics of natural language expressions that are commonly taken to refer to individuals: pronouns, definite descriptions and proper names. It claims, contrary to previous theorizing, that they all have a common syntax and semantics, roughly that which is currently associated by philosophers and linguists with definite descriptions as construed in the tradition of Frege. As well as advancing this proposal, I hope to achieve at least one other aim, that of urging semanticists dealing with pronoun interpretation, in particular donkey anaphora, to consider a wider range of theories at all times than is sometimes done at present. I am thinking particularly of the gulf that seems to have emerged between those who practice some version of dynamic semantics (including DRT) and those who eschew this approach and rely on some version of the E-type analysis for donkey anaphora (if they consider this phenomenon at all). In my opinion there is too little work directly comparing the claims of these two schools (for that is what they amount to) and testing them against the data in the way that any two rival theories might be tested. (Irene Heim’s 1990 article in Linguistics and Philosophy does this, and

This paper studies the distribution of ‘list readings’ in questions like who does everyone like? vs. who likes everyone?. More generally, it focuses on the interaction between w&words and quantified NPs. It is argued that, contrary to widespread belief, the pattern of available readings of constituent questions can be explained as a consequence of Weak Crossover, a well-known property of grammar. In particular, list readings are claimed to be a special case of ‘functional readings’, rather than arising from quantifying into questions. Functional readings are argued to be encoded in the syntax as doubly indexed traces, which straightforwardly leads to a Crossover account of the absence of list readings in who likes evevone?. Empirical and theoretical consequences of this idea for the syntax and semantics of questions are considered.