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

This paper treats the correspondence between the reference type of NPs (i.e., mass nouns, count nouns, measure constructions, plurals) and the temporal constitution of verbal predicates (i.e., activities, accomplish-ments). A theory will be developed that handles the well known influence of the reference type of NPs in argument positions on the temporal consti-tution of the verbal expressions, assuming an event semantics with lattice structures and thematic roles as primitive relations between events and ob-jects. Some consequences for the theory of thematic roles will be discussed, and the effect of partitive case marking on the verbal aspect, as in Finnish, and of aspectual marking on the definiteness of NPs, like in Slavic, will be explained. 1

INTRODUCTION This is a brief overview of formal theories concerned with the study of the notions of (and the relations between) parts and wholes. The guiding idea is that we can distinguish between a theory of parthood (mereology) and a theory of wholeness (holology, which is essentially afforded by topology), and the main question examined is how these two theories can be combined to obtain a unified theory of parts and wholes. We examine various non-equivalent ways of pursuing this task, mainly with reference to its relevance to spatio-temporal reasoning. In particular, three main strategies are compared: (i) mereology and topology as two independent (though mutually related) theories; (ii) mereology as a general theory subsuming topology; (iii) topology as a general theory subsuming mereology. This is done in Sections 4 through 6. We also consider some more speculative strategies and directions for further research. First, however, we begin with some preliminary outline of

This thesis develops a new approach to automatic language generation that focuses on the need to produce a range of different paraphrases from the same input representation. One novelty of the system is its solidly grounding representations of word meaning in a background knowledge base, which enables the production of paraphrases stemming from certain inferences, rather than from purely lexical relationships alone. The system is designed in such a way that the paraphrasing mechanism extends naturally to a multilingual generator; specifically, we will be concerned with producing English and German sentences. The focus of the system is on lexical paraphrases, and one of the contributions of the thesis is in identifying, analyzing and extending relevant linguistic research so that it can be used to handle...

This paper consists of two parts. The first part discusses commonsense knowledge about events as manifested in language. Three kinds of knowledge are identified: compositional, durational, and aspectual. Compositional knowledge concerns internal structuring of events into preparatory, initial, main (the body), final, and resulting stages. Durational knowledge concerns durational relations between events and stages of the same event. Durational knowledge can be expressed as qualitative dependencies among the parameters of the event and as its time scale. The notion of time scale is introduced and related to shared cyclical events (time units). In discussing

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 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

Natural language competent embodied cognitive agents should satisfy two requirements. First, they should act in and reason about a changing world, using reasoning in the service of acting and acting in the service of reasoning. Second, they should be able to communicate their beliefs, and report their past, ongoing, and future actions in natural language. This requires a representation of time using a deictic NOW, that models the compositional semantic properties of the English "now". Two problems emerge for an agent that interleaves reasoning and acting in a personal time. The first concerns the representation of plans and reactive rules involving reasoning about "future NOWs". The second emerges when, in the course of reasoning about NOW, the reasoning process itself results in NOW changing. We propose solutions for the two problems and conclude that: (i) for embodied cognitive agents, time is not just the object of reasoning, but is embedded in the reasoning pr...

We discuss data involving the temporal structure of connected discourse. Questions are raised about the relation between clause order in discourse and causal order in the world, and about the coherence of certain discourses. We maintain that interpretation is contextually influenced by knowledge of the world and of pragmatics, and that the role of this knowledge should be formalised via a defeasible logic. It transpires that a constrained set of reasoning patterns underlies the retrieval of certain temporal structures. Not all defeasible logics capture the set; the data help choose between candidate logics. We demonstrate that an adequate logic characterises when a text is temporally coherent, reliable and unambiguous relative to the context. We also discuss defeasible reasoning in language generation, and some consequences for the semantics-pragmatics interface.