Articles

This paper shows that a first-order unification- based semantic interpretation for various coordi- nate constructs is possible without an explicit use of lambda expressions if we slightly modify the standard Montagovian semantics of coordination. This modification, along with partial execution, completely eliminates the lambda reduction steps during semantic interpretation. 1...

Linear precedence (LP) rules are widely used for stating word order principles. They have been adopted as constraints by HPSG but no encoding in the formalism has been provided. Since they only order siblings, they are not quite adequate, at least not for German. We propose a notion of LP …...

This paper presents a plan-based model that han- dles negotiation subdialogues by inferring both the communicative actions that people pursue when speaking and the beliefs underlying these actions. We contend that recognizing the complex dis- course actions pursued in negotiation subdialogues (e.g., expressing doubt) requires both a multi- strength belief …...

We present an approach to grammar development where the task is decomposed into two separate subtasks. The first task is hnguistic, with the goal of producing a set of rules that have a large coverage (in the sense that the correct parse is among the proposed parses) on a bhnd …...

In natural language processing, ambiguity res- olution is a central issue, and can be regarded as a preference assignment problem. In this paper, a Generalized Probabilistic Semantic Model (GPSM) is proposed for preference computation. An effective semantic tagging procedure is proposed for tagging semantic features. A semantic score function is …...

The precise formulation of derivation for tree- adjoining grammars has important ramifications for a wide variety of uses of the formalism, from syntactic analysis to semantic interpretation and statistical language modeling. We argue that the definition of tree-adjoining derivation must be re- formulated in order to manifest the proper linguis- …...

I argue that because of spelling and typing errors and other properties of typed text, the identification of words and word boundaries in general requires syntactic and semantic knowledge. A lattice representation is there- fore appropriate for lexical analysis. I show how the use of such a representation in the …...

In this paper we discuss a mechanism for modifying context in a tutorial dialogue. The context mechanism imposes a pedagogically motivated misrepresentation (PMM) on a dialogue to achieve instructional goals. In the paper, we outline several types of PMMs and detail a particular PMM in a sample dialogue situation. While …...

This paper presents a connectionist syntactic parser which uses Structure Unification Grammar as its grammatical framework. The parser is im- plemented in a connectionist architecture which stores and dynamically manipulates symbolic rep- resentations, but which can't represent arbitrary disjunction and has bounded memory. These problems can be overcome with Structure …...

We show that the class of string languages gener- ated by linear context-free rewriting systems is equal to the class of output languages of deterministic tree- walking transducers. From equivalences that have pre- viously been established we know that this class of lan- guages is also equal to the string …...

We developed a prototype information retrieval sys- tem which uses advanced natural language process- ing techniques to enhance the effectiveness of tradi- tional key-word based document retrieval. The back- bone of our system is a statistical retrieval engine which performs automated indexing of documents, then search and ranking in response …...

This paper presents an analysis of purpose clauses in the context of instruction understanding. Such analysis shows that goals affect the interpretation and / or exe- cution of actions, lends support to the proposal of using generation and enablement to model relations between actions, and sheds light on some inference …...

Prosody can be useful in resolving certain lex- ical and structural ambiguities in spoken English. In this paper we present some results of employ- ing two types of prosodic information, namely pitch and pause, to assist syntactic and semantic analysis during parsing. 1....

Two independent mechanisms of context change have been discussed separately in the literature - context change by entity...

In this paper we compare two grammar-based gen- eration algorithms: the Semantic-Head-Driven Genera- tion Algorithm (SHDGA), and the Essential Arguments Algorithm (EAA). Both algorithms have successfully addressed several outstanding problems in grammar- based generation, including dealing with non-mono- tonic compositionality of representation, left-recursion, deadlock-prone rules, and nondeterminism. We con- centrate …...

The class of linear context-free rewriting sys- tems has been introduced as a generalization of a class of grammar formalisms known as mildly context-sensitive. The recognition problem for lin- ear context-free rewriting languages is studied at length here, presenting evidence that, even in some restricted cases, it cannot be solved …...

I In this paper we present algorithms for the interpretation and generation of a kind of particu- larized conversational implicature occurring in cer- tain indirect replies. Our algorithms make use of discourse expectations, discourse plans, and dis- course relations. The algorithms calculate implica- tures of discourse units of one or …...

We have analyzed 607 sentences of sponta- neous human-computer speech data containing re- pairs, drawn from a total corpus of 10,718 sen- tences. We present here criteria and techniques for automatically detecting the presence of a repair, its location, and making the appropriate correc- tion. The criteria involve integration of …...

This paper describes Picky, a probabilistic agenda-based chart parsing algorithm which uses a technique called p~'ob- abilistic prediction to predict which grammar rules are likely to lead to an acceptable parse of the input. Using a subopti- mal search method, "Picky significantly reduces the number of edges produced by CKY-like …...

Aspects of semantic interpretation, such as quan- tifier scoping and reference resolution, are often realised computationally by non-monotonic opera- tions involving loss of information and destructive manipulation of semantic representations. The paper describes how monotonic reference resolu- tion and scoping can be carried out using a re- vised Quasi Logical …...