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The Other Syntax: Approaching Natural Language Semantics Through Logical Form Composition

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Book cover Constraint Solving and Language Processing (CSLP 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3438))

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Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive, constraint-based formalism for natural language syntax that supports genuinely semantic interpretation. It does so by carefully distinguishing the semantically referential parts of constituency in phrase structure from those that reason about word order and contiguity, by assigning logical expressions to phrases that are drawn from the common semantic language of two-sorted type theory (Ty2), by defining an extension of typed feature logic (TFL) for making underspecified descriptions of these semantic terms, and by allowing for general inference to take place over these logical expressions. Both well-formedness in the underspecified semantic description language and real-world inference among the fully resolved Ty2 terms denoted by those descriptions can be conducted by closure over algebras of Constraint Handling Rules [1] in a logic programming implementation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 10 King’s College Rd., Toronto, M5S 3G4, Canada

    Gerald Penn

  2. Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Tübingen, Wilhelmstraße 19, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Frank Richter

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  1. Gerald Penn
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  2. Frank Richter
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research group PLIS: Programming, Logic and Intelligent Systems, Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies, Roskilde University, P.O. Box 260, DK-4000, Roskilde, Denmark

    Henning Christiansen

  2. Department of Computational Linguistics, Center for Computational Modeling of Language, Copenhagen Business School, Bernhard Bangs Alle 17 B, DK-2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Peter Rossen Skadhauge

  3. Computer Science, Roskilde University, Building 42.1, P.O. Box, DK-4000, Roskilde, Denmark

    Jørgen Villadsen

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Penn, G., Richter, F. (2005). The Other Syntax: Approaching Natural Language Semantics Through Logical Form Composition. In: Christiansen, H., Skadhauge, P.R., Villadsen, J. (eds) Constraint Solving and Language Processing. CSLP 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3438. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11424574_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11424574_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26165-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31928-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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