Syntactic structure constrains the possible "coreference " relations between the noun phrases in a sentence. Since the early days of generative syntax, we have learned a great deal about the nature of these structural constraints. Much of this syntactic theorizing has been possible with only a vague and informal understanding of what it really is in semantic terms that is being constrained here. Everyone agrees that it is not coreference in a literal sense, i.e., sameness of referents. But to specify in positive and semantically precise terms what it is instead has turned out to be non-trivial. Those authors that have given serious attention to the semantic import of syntactic constraints on so-called "coreference " have arrived at rather different conclusions. 1 A particularly elegant and well-elaborated proposal in this regard is due to Tanya Reinhart (1983a; 1983b). I ts central thesis is that only one type of "coreference " relation is syntactically represented and directly constrained by principles of grammar, and this is the well-understood relation of variable binding in the sense of formal logic. Other semantic relations, in particular such

Abstract not found

The interpretation of coercion construc- tions (to begin a book) has been recently considered as resulting from the operation of type changing. For instance, a phrase of type o (object) is coerced to a phrase of type e (event) under the influence of the predi- cate. We show that this procedure encounters empirical difficulties. Focussing on the begin/commencer case, we show that the coercion interpretation results both from general semantic processes and properties of the predicate, and we argue that it is best represented at the lexical level. The solution is formulated in the HPSG formalism, where the lexical description of heads includes a specification of the argument and articulates syntax and semantics. We propose that the properties attached to the complement remain the same as they are oustside the construction, but that the semantics of the predicate is enriched to include an abstract predicate of which the complement is an argument.

This paper presents a new model of anaphoric processing that utilizes the establishment of coherence relations between clauses in a discourse. We survey data that comprises a currently stalemated argument over whether VP-ellipsis is an inherently syntactic or inherently semantic phenomenon, and show that the data can be handled within a uniform discourse processing architecture. This architecture, which revises the dichotomy between ellipsis vs. Model Interpretive Anaphora given by Sag and Hankamer (1984) , is also able to accommodate divergent theories and data for pronominal reference resolution. The resulting architecture serves as a baseline system for modeling the role of cohesive devices in natural language. 1 Introduction There has been much debate concerning the appropriate level of language processing at which to treat VP-ellipsis resolution. Syntactic accounts (Fiengo and May, 1990; Haik, 1987; Hellan, 1988; Hestvik, 1993; Lappin, 1993; Lappin and McCord, 1990) claim that ...

The central claim of this dissertation is that an elliptical VP is a proform. This claim has two primary consequences: first, the elliptical VP can have no internal syntactic structure. Second, the interpretation of VP ellipsis must be governed by the same general conditions governing other proforms, such as pronouns. The basic condition governing the interpretation of a proform is that it must be semantically identified with its antecedent. A computational model is described in which this identification is mediated by store and retrieve operations defined with respect to a discourse model. Because VP ellipsis is treated on a par with other proforms, the ambiguity arising from “sloppy identity ” becomes epiphenomenal, resulting from the fact that the store and retrieve operations are freely ordered. A primary argument for the proform theory of VP ellipsis concerns syntactic constraints on variables within the antecedent. I examine many different types of variables, including reflexives, reciprocals, negative polarity items, and wh-traces. In all these cases, syntactic constraints are not respected under ellipsis. This indicates that the relation governing VP ellipsis is semantic rather than syntactic. In further support of the proform theory, I show that there is a striking similarity in the antecedence possibilities for VP ellipsis and those for pronouns. Two

In this paper we examine three natural language uses of a recently developed logic grammar formalism- Assumption Grammars- particularly suitable for hypothetical reasoning. They are based on intuitionistic and linear implications scoped over the current continuation, which allows us to follow given branches of the computation under hypotheses that disappear when and if backtracking takes place. We also show two results which were surprising to us, namely: a) Assumption grammars allow a direct and efficient implementation of link grammars--- a context-free like formalism developed independently from logic grammars; and b) they offer the flexibility of switching between data-driven or goal-driven reasoning, at no overhead in terms of either syntax or implementation. 1 Introduction A grammar is a finite way of specifying a language which may consist of an infinite number of sentences. A logic grammar has rules that can be represented as Horn clauses. Logic grammars can be conveniently im...

We give an analysis of ellipsis resolution in terms of a stralghtforwaxd discourse copying algorithm that correctly predicts a wide range of phenomena. The treatment does not suffer from problems inherent in identity-of-relations analyses. Furthermore, in contrast to the approach of Dalrymple et al. [1991], the treatment di- rectly encodes the intuitive distinction be- tween full NPs and the referential elements that corefer with them through what we term role linking. The correct predictions for several problematic examples of ellipsis naturally result. Finally, the analysis extends directly to other discourse copying phenomena.

We describe an implementation in Carpenter's typed feature formalism, ALE, of a discourse gram~ mar of the kind proposed by Scha, Polanyi, et al. We examine their method for resolving parallelism-dependent anaphora and show that there is a coherent feature-structural rendition of this type of grammar which uses the operations of priority union and generalization. We describe an augmentation of the ^LE system to encompass these operations and we show that an appropriate choice of definition for priority union gives the desired multiple output for examples of Vl-ellipsis which exhibit a strict/sloppy ambiguity.

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of the space of possible analyses of the phenomenon of quantifier domain restriction, together with a set of considerations which militate against all but our own proposal. Among the many accounts we consider and reject are the ‘explicit’ approach to quantifier domain restriction discussed, for example, by Stephen Neale, and the pragmatic approach to quantifier domain restriction proposed by Kent Bach. Our hope is that the exhaustive discussion of this special case of context-dependence will provide guidelines for how to decide, for an arbitrary case of context-dependent discourse, whether it should be treated syntactically, semantically, or pragmatically.

this paper would be consistent with an identity condition defined at Surface Structure (SS), Logical Form(LF), or at the level of Discourse Representation Structure (DRS). For concretehess, we describe two possible identity conditions, at LF and DRS