Semantic Representation of Natural Language

✍ Scribed by Michael Levison; Greg Lessard; Craig Thomas; Matthew Donald

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 273
• Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Theoretical Linguistics
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear semantic formalism designed to allow non-programmers such as linguists and literary specialists to represent elements of meaning which they must deal with in their research and teaching. At the same time, by its basis in a functional programming paradigm, it retains sufficient formal precision to support computational implementation.
The formalism is designed to represent meaning as found at a variety of levels, including basic semantic units and relations, word meaning, sentence-level phenomena, and text-level meaning. By drawing on fundamental principles of program design, the proposed formalism is both easy to read and modify yet sufficiently powerful to allow for the representation of complex semantic phenomena.
In this monograph, the authors introduce the formalism and show its basic structure, apply it to the analysis of the semantics of a variety of linguistic phenomena in both English and French, and use it to represent the semantics of a variety of texts ranging from single sentences, to textual excepts, to a full story.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
HalfTitle
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Typographical Conventions
Chap01.pdf
Introduction
What we are trying to do
The jewel in the crown
How to read this book
Chap02.pdf
Basic Concepts
Semasiological and onomasiological perspectives
Meaning and reference
Describing or creating reality
The functions of language
Semantic units and semantic relations
Language, knowledge and perspective
Anthropomorphism, minimalism and practicality
Desiderata
Onomasiological perspective
Broad coverage
Resolution
Practicality
Chap03.pdf
Previous Approaches
Lexical semantics
Lexicography
Componential analysis
Conceptual structures
Lexical relations and inheritance networks
The generative lexicon
Case grammar
Conceptual Dependency
Semantic networks
Systemic grammar
Truth-functional perspectives
Computational tools for semantic analysis
Models of text structure
Discourse Representation Theory
Segmented DRT
Rhetorical Structure Theory
Narrative structure and narrative prose generation
Knowledge representation and ontologies
KL-ONE
OWL
Suggested Upper Merged Ontology
CYC
Models of reasoning: ACT* and ACT-R
In sum
Chap04.pdf
Semantic Expressions: Introduction
Background
Some caveats
Basic expressions
Semantic types
Semantic functions
The constant UNSPEC
Adjustments
Qualifiers
Relative qualifiers
Restriction versus description
Lists
Circumstances
Modifying completions
Adjustments versus functions
Modifying completions versus modifying actions
Combining completions
Representing semantics, not syntax
Chap05.pdf
Formal Issues
Introduction
Properties of SEs
Function names, adjustments and attributes
The Syntax of SEs
Semantic tree
The semantic lexicon
Validity
Function definition
Encyclopaedic information
Identities and implications
Lexical creativity
Adjustments
Lexicon size
Evaluating meaning
Chap06.pdf
Semantic Expressions: Basic Features
Introduction
Generalized quantifiers
Count and mass entities
Quantifier granularity
Negatives
Only
Numbers
On the granularity of snow
Nobody and everybody
Sets and set-difference
Interrogatives
The constant QUERY
The adjustment qu
The adjustment wh
Tense, aspect and modal verbs
Sequencing
Timestamps
Specific and non-specific entities
Chap07.pdf
Advanced Features
Co-referential relations
Entity constants
Other constants
Scope of definition
Lists
Connectives
Associativity and commutativity
Propagation of adjustments
Other programming features
Repetition
List functions
Relatives revisited
The House That Jack Built
Functional programming
Duelling quantifiers
Two-dimensional quantifiers
Arrays
Football fans
only Revisited
Mass entities
Speakers, listeners and speech
Imperatives and vocatives
Speech
Vale, Caesar
Chap08.pdf
Applications: Capture
What to represent?
Literal versus intended meaning
Filling omissions
Causality
Relationships
What to leave out?
Adventure
Cave names
Other problems
Control mechanism
A guided tour
Instruction manual or recipe book
Topoi
Chap09.pdf
Three Little Pigs
Preliminaries
The story
Alternative segment for bad_encounter
Length issues
Chap10.pdf
Applications: Creation
A hole in three
A Proppian fairy tale
Variant stories
Romeo and Juliet
In sum
Bib.pdf
index.pdf