Semantic abstraction and anaphora

Mark Johnson; Martin Kay

Semantic abstraction and anaphora

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference proceeding contribution › peer-review

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Abstract

This paper describes a way of expressing syntactic rules that associate semantic formulae with strings, but in a manner that is independent of the syntactic details of these formulae. In particular we show how the same rules construct predicate argument formulae in the style of Montague grammar[13], representations reminiscent of situation semantics (Barwise and Perry [2]) and of the event logic of Davidson [5], or representations inspired by the discourse representations proposed by Kamp [9]. The idea is that semantic representations are specified indirectly using semantic construction operators, which enforce an abstraction barrier between the grammar and the semantic representations themselves. First we present a simple grammar which is compatible with the three different sets of constructors for the three formalisms. We then extend the grammar to provide one treatment that accounts for quantifier raising in the three different semantic formalisms.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	The Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Editors	Hans Karlgren
Publisher	The Association for Computational Linguistics
Pages	17-27
Number of pages	11
Volume	1
Publication status	Published - 1990
Externally published	Yes
Event	International Conference on Computational Linguistics (13th : 1990) - Helsinki, Finland Duration: 20 Aug 1990 → 24 Aug 1990

Conference

Conference	International Conference on Computational Linguistics (13th : 1990)
Abbreviated title	COLING 1990
Country/Territory	Finland
City	Helsinki
Period	20/08/90 → 24/08/90

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Publisher 1990. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Access to Document

Publisher version (open access)Final published version, 777 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-SA

https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/C90-1003/Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

Cite this

@inproceedings{68c8325a9f614fe39f7d7b97f498fe77,

title = "Semantic abstraction and anaphora",

abstract = "This paper describes a way of expressing syntactic rules that associate semantic formulae with strings, but in a manner that is independent of the syntactic details of these formulae. In particular we show how the same rules construct predicate argument formulae in the style of Montague grammar[13], representations reminiscent of situation semantics (Barwise and Perry [2]) and of the event logic of Davidson [5], or representations inspired by the discourse representations proposed by Kamp [9]. The idea is that semantic representations are specified indirectly using semantic construction operators, which enforce an abstraction barrier between the grammar and the semantic representations themselves. First we present a simple grammar which is compatible with the three different sets of constructors for the three formalisms. We then extend the grammar to provide one treatment that accounts for quantifier raising in the three different semantic formalisms.",

author = "Mark Johnson and Martin Kay",

note = "Copyright the Publisher 1990. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher. ; International Conference on Computational Linguistics (13th : 1990), COLING 1990 ; Conference date: 20-08-1990 Through 24-08-1990",

year = "1990",

language = "English",

volume = "1",

pages = "17--27",

editor = "Hans Karlgren",

booktitle = "The Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics",

publisher = "The Association for Computational Linguistics",

}

Johnson, M & Kay, M 1990, Semantic abstraction and anaphora. in H Karlgren (ed.), The Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics. vol. 1, The Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 17-27, International Conference on Computational Linguistics (13th : 1990), Helsinki, Finland, 20/08/90. <https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/C90-1003/>

TY - GEN

T1 - Semantic abstraction and anaphora

AU - Johnson, Mark

AU - Kay, Martin

N1 - Copyright the Publisher 1990. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

PY - 1990

Y1 - 1990

N2 - This paper describes a way of expressing syntactic rules that associate semantic formulae with strings, but in a manner that is independent of the syntactic details of these formulae. In particular we show how the same rules construct predicate argument formulae in the style of Montague grammar[13], representations reminiscent of situation semantics (Barwise and Perry [2]) and of the event logic of Davidson [5], or representations inspired by the discourse representations proposed by Kamp [9]. The idea is that semantic representations are specified indirectly using semantic construction operators, which enforce an abstraction barrier between the grammar and the semantic representations themselves. First we present a simple grammar which is compatible with the three different sets of constructors for the three formalisms. We then extend the grammar to provide one treatment that accounts for quantifier raising in the three different semantic formalisms.

AB - This paper describes a way of expressing syntactic rules that associate semantic formulae with strings, but in a manner that is independent of the syntactic details of these formulae. In particular we show how the same rules construct predicate argument formulae in the style of Montague grammar[13], representations reminiscent of situation semantics (Barwise and Perry [2]) and of the event logic of Davidson [5], or representations inspired by the discourse representations proposed by Kamp [9]. The idea is that semantic representations are specified indirectly using semantic construction operators, which enforce an abstraction barrier between the grammar and the semantic representations themselves. First we present a simple grammar which is compatible with the three different sets of constructors for the three formalisms. We then extend the grammar to provide one treatment that accounts for quantifier raising in the three different semantic formalisms.

M3 - Conference proceeding contribution

VL - 1

SP - 17

EP - 27

BT - The Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computational Linguistics

A2 - Karlgren, Hans

PB - The Association for Computational Linguistics

T2 - International Conference on Computational Linguistics (13th : 1990)

Y2 - 20 August 1990 through 24 August 1990

ER -

Semantic abstraction and anaphora

Abstract

Conference

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