Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Attributed translation and the semantics of natural language

  • Natural Language Processing
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Attribute Grammars and their Applications

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 461))

Abstract

When Knuth introduced attribute grammars, he observed that although “oriented primarily towards programming languages, the same methods appear to be relevant also in the study of natural languages”. We demonstrate that his intuition is computationally justifiable, based on the algebraic equivalence of attribute grammars and Montague's theory of Universal Grammar. We discuss the relationship between attribute grammars, axiomatic theories and logic programming. We find that attribute grammars can be used to encode an algebraic specification of a natural language, attributed translation used to compute representations of the ‘meaning’ of a sentence at different levels of abstraction, and that the specifications can be implemented as logic programs. We illustrate the application of non-deterministic attributed translation to natural language by the specification of a subset of Montague's PTQ, including a treatment of some semantic ambiguities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Abramson, H. (1984): Definite Clause Translation Grammars; 1984 International Symposium on Logic Programming; pp233–240.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bainbridge, R. I. (1985): Montagovian Definite Clause Grammar; Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics; pp1–7; University of Geneva.

    Google Scholar 

  • Briscoe, E., Grover, C., Boguraev, B. and Carroll, J. (1987): A Formalism and Environment for the Development of a Large Grammar of English; Proceedings of the Tenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Milan, Italy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, R. (1983): Quantification and Syntactic Theory; D. Reidel, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, R. and Parsons, T. (1976): Montague Grammar, Generative Semantics and Interpretive Semantics; in Partee, B. H. (ed): Montague Grammar; Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunha, J. F. and Cunningham, R. J. (1987): Some Comments on Montague's Treatment of English; paper presented at the Conference on Logic and Linguistics, Stanford, California.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darensart, P. and Maluszynski, J. (1985): Relating Logic Programs and Attribute Grammars; Journal of Logic Programming, vol 2, pp119–155; Elsevier Publishing Co.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dowty, D. R. (1980): Word Meaning and Montague Grammar; D. Reidel, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dowty, D. R., Wall, R. and Peters, S. (1981): Introduction to Montague Semantics; D. Reidel, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gazdar, G. J., Klein, E., Pullum, G. K. and Sag, I. (1985): Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar; Blackwell, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gazdar, G. J., Pullum, G. K., Carpenter, R., Klein, E., Hukari, T. E. and Levine, R. D. (1987): Category Structures; CSLI Report no. CSLI-87-102; Stanford University, Ca.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goguen, J. A. (1975): Semantics of Computation; in Goos, G. and Hartmanis, J. (eds): Category Theory Applied to Computation and Control; LNCS vol. 25, p151–163; Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goguen, J. A. (1988): What is Unification? A Categorical View of Substitution, Equation and Solution; CSLI Report no. CSLI-88-124, Stanford University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halvorsen, P.-K. and Ladusaw, W. A. (1979): Montague's “Universal Grammar”: An Introduction for the Linguist; Linguistics and Philosophy 3; pp185–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horai, H., Saeki, M. and Enomoto, H. (1987): Specification Based Software Development System Pure TELL; International Institute for Advanced Study of Social Info. Sci. Research Report No. 73, Fujitsu Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, S. C. (1975): YACC: Yet Another Compiler-Compiler; Bell Labs. Comp. Sci. Tech. Report. no. 39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jowsey, H. E. (1987): Montague Grammar and First-Order Logic; in Haddock, N., Klein, E. and Morrill, G. (eds): Edinburgh Working Papers in Cognitive Science volume 1: Categorial Grammar, Unification Grammar and Parsing; Edinburgh University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamp, H. (1981): A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation; in Groenendijk, J., Janssen, T. and Stokhof, M. (eds): Formal Methods in the Study of Language, vol 136, pp277–322; Amsterdam: Mathematical Centre Tracts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kay, M. (1985): Parsing in Functional Unification Grammar; in Dowty, D. R., Karttunen, L. and Zwicky, A. M. (eds): Natural Language Parsing: Psychological, Computational and Theoretical Perspectives; Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knuth, D. (1968): The Semantics of Context-Free Languages; Mathematical Systems Theory 2; pp127–145. Correction appears in Mathematical Systems Theory 5; p95 (1971).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montague, R. (1974a): Universal Grammar; §7 in Thomason, R. H. (ed): Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague; Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Montague, R. (1974b): The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English; §8 in Thomason R. H. (ed): Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague; Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pereira, F. C. N. (1987): Grammars and Logics of Partial Information; in Lassez, J.-L. (ed): Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Logic Programming, Melbourne, Australia; vol. 2, pp989–1013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pitt, J. V. (to appear): Compositional Grammars and Natural Language Processing; unpublished Ph.D. Thesis; Department of Computing, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenschein, S. and Shieber, S. M. (1982): Translating English into Logical Form; Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp1–8; University of Toronto.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, D. A. (1986): Denotational Semantics: A Methodology for Language Development; Allyn and Bacon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwind, C. (1978): A Formalism for the Description of Question Answering Systems; in Bolc, L. (ed): Natural Language Communication with Computers; LNCS No. 63; Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shieber, S. M. (1986): An Introduction to Unification-Based Approaches to Grammar; CSLI Lecture Notes 4, Chicago University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, H. S (1982): Handling Metarules in a parser for GPSG; Research Paper No. 175, Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Emden, M. H. and Kowalski, R. (1976): The Semantics of Predicate Logic as a Programming Language; Journal of the ACM, vol. 23, no. 4; pp733–742.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warren, D. S. and Friedman, J. (1982): Using Semantics in Non-Context-Free Parsing of Montague Grammar; American Journal of Computational Linguistics; vol. 8, no. 3–4, pp123–138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yellin, D. (1987): Attribute Grammar Inversion and Source-to-Source Translation; LNCS 302, Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, 180, Queen's Gate, SW7 2BZ, London

    J. V. Pitt & R. J. Cunningham

Authors
  1. J. V. Pitt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. R. J. Cunningham
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

P. Deransart M. Jourdan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Pitt, J.V., Cunningham, R.J. (1990). Attributed translation and the semantics of natural language. In: Deransart, P., Jourdan, M. (eds) Attribute Grammars and their Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 461. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53101-7_20

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-53101-7_20

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-53101-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46666-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation