Abstract

In this paper, we show that Higher--Order Coloured Unification -- a form of unification developed for automated theorem proving -- provides a general theory for modeling the interface between the interpretation process and other sources of linguistic, non semantic information. In particular, it provides the general theory for the Primary Occurrence Restriction which (Dalrymple et al., 1991)'s analysis called for. 1 Introduction It is well known that Higher--Order Unification (HOU) can be used to construct the semantics of Natural Language: (Dalrymple et al., 1991) -- henceforth, DSP -- show that it allows a treatment of VP-- Ellipsis which successfully captures the interaction of VPE with quantification and nominal anaphora; (Pulman, 1995; Gardent and Kohlhase, 1996) use HOU to model the interpretation of focus and its interaction with focus sensitive operators, adverbial quantifiers and second occurrence expressions; (Gardent et al., 1996) shows that HOU yields a simple but precise ...

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