tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "Principle Based Semantics for HPSG"

The paper presents a constraint based semantic formalism for HPSG. The syntax-semantics interface directly implements syntactic conditions on quantifier scoping and distributivity. 1 The construction of semantic representations is guided" by general principles governing the interaction between syntax and semantics. Each of these principles acts as a constraint to narrow down the set of possible interpretations of a sentence. Meanings of ambiguous sentences are represented by single partial representations (so-called U(nderspecified) D(iscourse) R(epresentation) S(tructure)s) to which further constraints can be added monotonically to gain more information about the content of a sentence. . | Principle Based Semantics for HPSG Anette Frank and Uwe Reyle Institute for Computational Linguistics University of Stuttgart D-70174 Stuttgart Germany e-mail uwe@ Abstract The paper presents a constraint based semantic formalism for HPSG. The syntax-semantics interface directly implements syntactic conditions on quantifier scoping and distributivity. 1 The construction of semantic representations is guided by general principles governing the interaction between syntax and semantics. Each of these principles acts as a constraint to narrow down the set of possible interpretations of a sentence. Meanings of ambiguous sentences are represented by single partial representations so-called U nderspecified D iscourse R epresentation S tructure s to which further constraints can be added monotonically to gain more information about the content of a sentence. There is no need to build up a large number of alternative representations of the sentence which are then filtered by subsequent discourse and world knowledge. The advantage of UDRSs is not only that they allow for monotonic incremental interpretation but also that they are equipped with truth conditions and a proof theory that allows for inferences to be drawn directly on structures where quantifier scope is not resolved. 1 Introduction The semantic analysis of standard HPSG deviates from the familiar Montegovian way to construct semantic representations mainly in that it uses unification to eliminate the need for J-reduction. Variables Un the present paper we do only focus on simple principles restricting scope ambiguities and ambiguities resulting from plural NPs in English. For German restrictions on scope are much more complicated because they cannot be stated independently of scrambling phenomena. In Frank Reyle 1994 the present approach is worked out for a fragment of German that deals with i quantifier scope ambiguities triggered by scrambling and or movement and ii .