WordNet is an on-line lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current

In this position paper we describe the scopes of two schools in lexicM semantics, which we call syntax-driven lexical semantics and ontology-driven lexical semantics, respectively. Both approaches arc used in various applications at The Center for Machine Translation. We believe that a comparative analysis of these positions and clarification of claims and coverage is essential for the field as a whole. There are different traditions in the study of lexical semantics. Two of them seem to be the most current in computational linguistics and its applications-- the one based on syntactic theory studies and the other, on the artificial intelligence approaches. The former seeks to discover semantic properties of lexical items from which syntactic behavior (such as subcategorization and participation in transitivity alternations) is predictable. (See Grimshaw, 1990; B. Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 1990.) The latter tries to establish the meaning of natural language texts with the help of an independently constructed "world model " (often called "ontology") which explicates relations among entities in the world rather than lexical units.

Abstract not found

as denoting, describing, or corresponding to, event-like things rather than truth-values (e.g. events (Davidson, 1980), situations (Barwise and Perry, 1983), states of affairs (Jackendoff, 1976)). Below I argue that such a view of sentence denotations, along with additional assumptions about the nature of semantic interpretation, yields a fairly natural means of accounting for the semantics of a certain class of

this paper, I propose a framework within which to compare a variety of semantic formalisms which have been proposed in linguistics and artificial intelligence. The paper lays out three dimensions (called ontological, logical, and relational), describing the relevant options along each and the implications of making alternative choices in the design of a formalism. It does not attempt to demonstrate that one or another alternative is right, but instead tries to clearly state the advantages and disadvantages of each in a non-partisan way. It is more in the style of a text-book than of a research paper. Its contribution will, I hope, be in dissolving some non-issues which have occupied previous discussion, and in focussing attention on the real distinctions between alternative proposals. My own prejudices are set forth in Winograd (1976) and Bobrow and Winograd (1977). In addition to citing primary sources, I will make particular reference to the discussion by Wilks (1977) since it is recent and sets out a number of the same issues

This paper was begun in the mid 1980's -- I will try to find out exactly when sometime. The last time that I worked at all on the text was in 1988. This is essentially the 1988 draft, with some minor formatting changes. I have never published the paper because it seems to me to need more thought.

this paper I explore some simple scene, description examples in which a hearer must make judgements involving reasoning about scenes, space, common-sense physics, cause-effect relationships, etc. While I propose some mechanisms for dealing with such scene descriptions, my primary concern at this time is tO flesh out our understanding of just what the mechanisms must accomplish: what information will be available to them and what inforation must be found or generated to account for the inferences we know are actually made

Motion Resultatives, and change-of-state predicates in general, are often metaphorically analyzed in terms of "movement" along paths (Gruber, 1965, Jackendoff, 1976, 1983, 1996, Krifka, 1998, Talmy, 2000). Specifically this can be done by positing path arguments and MRs for all verbs of (potential) change-of-state. Non-motion change of state verbs (e.g. dry, shine, batter, etc.) have abstract path arguments corresponding to the scales upon which the change of state occurs. Other non-stative verbs (e.g. squirm, rub, kick, etc.) have abstract path arguments corresponding to potential changes of state that aren't lexically entailed but implied (i.e. indefinite changes of state). Although such predicates don't lexically encode a definite change of state they do encode potential change of state, and these changes of state may be further defined, e.g. by resultatives as in rub to a shine (Tenny, 1992).

single subject experimental design across participants and behaviors in 4 patients with fluent aphasia. Participants received a semantic feature treatment to improve naming of either typical or atypical items within semantic categories, while

Time is fundamental in representing and reasoning about a changing world. A proper temporal representation requires characterizing two notions: (1) time itself, and (2) temporal incidence, i.e. the domainindependent properties for the truth-value of fluents and events throughout time. Their formal definition involves some controversial issues such as (i) the expression of instantaneous events and fluents that hold instantaneously, (ii) the dividing instant problem and (iii) the formalization of the properties for non-instantaneous holding of fluents. This paper discusses how previous attempts fail to address all these issues and presents simple yet satisfactory theories of time and temporal incidence. The theory of time, called IP, is based on having instants and periods at the same ontological level. The theory of temporal incidence is defined upon IP and its key insight is the distinction between continuous and discrete fluents. 1 Introduction Time has been recognized as a fundamen...