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Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification cover

Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification

edited by Kees van Deemter and Stanley Peters

Ambiguity is both a central notion in semantic theory and a key problem for natural language processing sytems. In recent years, the notion of ambiguity has come under close crutiny. This was mainly caused by developments in automatic natural language processing, where it is becoming more and more commong to use formal representations of meaning that are themselves ambiguous. (An example is the use of SRI's ‘quasi-logical forms’.) Such ambiguous representations are called underspecified because they do not contain sufficient information to determine their truth conditions uniquely. The properties of underspecified meaning representations are a subject of lively debate among computational as well as theoretical semanticists. In accordance with this new, ‘underspecifying’ perspective on ambiguity, the papers in this volume deal not only with traditional questions underspecified meaning representations and with the possibilities of using these representations in logical references.

Kees van Deemter is a researcher at the Institute for Perception Research (IPO) in The Netherlands.

Stanley Peters is a professor of linguistics and a member of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University.

Contents

  • Contributors
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • 1 Ambiguity Resolution and Discourse Interpretation Georgia M. Green
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Some clearly pragmatic uncertainties of interpretation
    • 3 Polysemic lexical ambiguity
    • 4 Ambiguity resolution
    • 5 Grammatical ambiguity; Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
    • 6 Conclusion
    • References
  • 2 Quantification and Prediction Jaap van der Does and Henk Verkuyl
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 The Scalar Approach
    • 3 Two modes of Predication
    • 4 The Present Framework
    • 5 Conclusions
    • References
  • 3 Monotone Decreasing Quantifiers in a Scope-Free Logical Form Jerry R. Hobbs
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Background
    • 3 The Nature of Typical Elements
    • 4 Substitution
    • 5 Monotone Decreasing Quantifiers
    • 6 Conclusion
    • References
  • 4 Situated Disambiguation with Properly Specified Representation Hideyuki Nakashima and Yasunari Harada
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Proper Specification
    • 3 Situated Representaiton for Inference and Communication
    • 4 Application to NL Semantics
    • References
  • 5 Resolving Lexical Ambiguity using a Formal Theory of Context Saša Buvač
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Formal Theory of Context
    • 3 Two Types of Contexts
    • 4 Representing Ambiguity
    • 5 Disambiguating via CommonSense Knowledge
    • 6 Context Change in a Discourse Segment
    • 7 Conclusion and Future Work
    • References
  • 6 A compositional treatment of polysemous arguments in Categorical Grammar Anne-Marie Mineur and Paul Buitelaar
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 Compositionality
    • 3 Lexical Semantics
    • 4 Lexical Semantic Structure
    • 5 A Categorical Treatment of Polysemous Arguments
    • 6 Conclusion
    • References
  • 7 Underspecified First Order Logics Hiyan Alshawi
    • 1 Logics of Underspecification
    • 2 The Underspecified Logic UL1
    • 3 The Underspecified Logic UL2
    • 4 Underspecified Logic and Natural Language
    • References
  • 8 Semantic Ambiguity and Perceived Ambiguity Massimo Poesio
    • 1 The Combinatiorial Explosion Puzzle
    • 2 Ambiguity in Natural Language
    • 3 The Underspecificaion Hypothesis
    • 4 An Underspecified Theory of Ambiguity, Part I: Lexical Ambiguity
    • 5 Other FOrms of Ambiguity
    • 6 Discussion
    • References
  • 9 Towards a Logic of Ambiguous Expressions Kees van Deemter
    • 1 Coping with Ambiguous Information
    • 2 Against a Disjunctive Theory of Ambiguity
    • 3 Ambiguous Representation
    • 4 Simple Logics for a Lexically Ambiguous Language
    • 5 Constraints on Interpretation
    • 6 An Evaluation of some Ambiguous Logics
    • 7 Loose Ends
    • References
  • 10 Co-Indexing Labeled DRs to Represent and Reason with Ambiguities Uwe Reyle
    • 1 Introduction
    • 2 A Short Introduction to UDRSs
    • 3 Truth and Consequences of UDRSs
    • 4 Ambiguities Triggered by Plural NPs
    • 5 The Antecednts of ‘They’
    • 6 Dependent Readings
    • 7 Conclusion
    • References
  • Index

1/25/96

ISBN (Paperback): 1575860287 (9781575860282)
ISBN (Cloth): 1575860295 (9781575860282)
ISBN (Electronic): 1575868334 (9781575868332)
Subject: Linguistics; Semantics; Ambiguity

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