Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages PDF Author: Franz Guenthner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400997752
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
The essays in this collection are the outgrowth of a workshop, held in June 1976, on formal approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of natural languages. They document in an astoundingly uniform way the develop ments in the formal analysis of natural languages since the late sixties. The avowed aim of the' workshop was in fact to assess the progress made in the application of formal methods to semantics, to confront different approaches to essentially the same problems on the one hand, and, on the other, to show the way in relating semantic and pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena. Several of these papers can in fact be regarded as attempts to close the 'semiotic circle' by bringing together the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of certain constructions in an explanatory framework thereby making it more than obvious that these three components of an integrated linguistic theory cannot be as neatly separated as one would have liked to believe. In other words, not only can we not elaborate a syntactic description of (a fragment of) a language and then proceed to the semantics (as Montague pointed out already forcefully in 1968), we cannot hope to achieve an adequate integrated syntax and semantics without paying heed to the pragmatic aspects of the constructions involved. The behavior of polarity items, 'quantifiers' like any, conditionals or even logical particles like and and or in non-indicative sentences is clear-cut evidence for the need to let each component of the grammar inform the other.

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages PDF Author: Franz Guenthner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400997752
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
The essays in this collection are the outgrowth of a workshop, held in June 1976, on formal approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of natural languages. They document in an astoundingly uniform way the develop ments in the formal analysis of natural languages since the late sixties. The avowed aim of the' workshop was in fact to assess the progress made in the application of formal methods to semantics, to confront different approaches to essentially the same problems on the one hand, and, on the other, to show the way in relating semantic and pragmatic explanations of linguistic phenomena. Several of these papers can in fact be regarded as attempts to close the 'semiotic circle' by bringing together the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of certain constructions in an explanatory framework thereby making it more than obvious that these three components of an integrated linguistic theory cannot be as neatly separated as one would have liked to believe. In other words, not only can we not elaborate a syntactic description of (a fragment of) a language and then proceed to the semantics (as Montague pointed out already forcefully in 1968), we cannot hope to achieve an adequate integrated syntax and semantics without paying heed to the pragmatic aspects of the constructions involved. The behavior of polarity items, 'quantifiers' like any, conditionals or even logical particles like and and or in non-indicative sentences is clear-cut evidence for the need to let each component of the grammar inform the other.

Formal Semantics of Natural Language

Formal Semantics of Natural Language PDF Author: Edward L. Keenan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521111119
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A volume of studies in natural language semantics which brings together work by philosophers, logicians and linguists. The main topics treated are: quantification and reference in natural language; the relations between formal logic, programming languages and natural language; pragmatics and discourse meaning; surface syntax and logical meaning. The volume derives from a colloquium organised in 1973 by the Kings College Research Centre, Cambridge and the papers have been edited for publication by Professor Keenan. It is hoped that the collection will make available some of the best work in this fast-moving field and will stimulate further progress by juxtaposing the different approaches and interests represented here.

Elements of Formal Semantics

Elements of Formal Semantics PDF Author: Yoad Winter
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748677771
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Introducing some of the foundational concepts, principles and techniques in the formal semantics of natural language, Elements of Formal Semantics outlines the mathematical principles that underlie linguistic meaning. Making use of a wide range of concrete English examples, the book presents the most useful tools and concepts of formal semantics in an accessible style and includes a variety of practical exercises so that readers can learn to utilise these tools effectively. For readers with an elementary background in set theory and linguistics or with an interest in mathematical modelling, this fascinating study is an ideal introduction to natural language semantics. Designed as a quick yet thorough introduction to one of the most vibrant areas of research in modern linguistics today this volume reveals the beauty and elegance of the mathematical study of meaning.

Computational Linguistics and Formal Semantics

Computational Linguistics and Formal Semantics PDF Author: Michael Rosner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521429887
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This 1992 collection explores the syntax/semantics interface, introducing the disciplines of computational linguistics and formal semantics.

Natural Language Semantics

Natural Language Semantics PDF Author: Brendan S. Gillon
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262039206
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 731

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Book Description
An introduction to natural language semantics that offers an overview of the empirical domain and an explanation of the mathematical concepts that underpin the discipline. This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of those approaches to natural language semantics that use the insights of logic. Many other texts on the subject focus on presenting a particular theory of natural language semantics. This text instead offers an overview of the empirical domain (drawn largely from standard descriptive grammars of English) as well as the mathematical tools that are applied to it. Readers are shown where the concepts of logic apply, where they fail to apply, and where they might apply, if suitably adjusted. The presentation of logic is completely self-contained, with concepts of logic used in the book presented in all the necessary detail. This includes propositional logic, first order predicate logic, generalized quantifier theory, and the Lambek and Lambda calculi. The chapters on logic are paired with chapters on English grammar. For example, the chapter on propositional logic is paired with a chapter on the grammar of coordination and subordination of English clauses; the chapter on predicate logic is paired with a chapter on the grammar of simple, independent English clauses; and so on. The book includes more than five hundred exercises, not only for the mathematical concepts introduced, but also for their application to the analysis of natural language. The latter exercises include some aimed at helping the reader to understand how to formulate and test hypotheses.

Semantics of Natural Language

Semantics of Natural Language PDF Author: D. Davidson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401025576
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 781

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Book Description
"The idea that prompted the conferenee for which many of these papers were written, and that inspired this book, is stated in the Editorial Introduction reprinted below from Volume 21 of Synthese. The present volume contains the artieles in Synthese 21, Numbers 3-4 and Synthese 22, Numbers 1-2. In addition, it ineludes new papers by Saul Kripke, James McCawley, John R. Ross, and Paul Ziff, and reprints 'Grammar and Philosophy' by P. F. Strawson. Strawson's artiele first appeared in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author and the Aristotelian Society. We also repeat our thanks to the Olivetti Companyand Edizione di Comunita of Milan for permission to inelude the paper by Dana Scott; it also appeared in Synthese 21. DONALO DAVIDSON GILBERT HARMAN EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION The success of linguistics in treating naturallanguages as formal syntactic systems has aroused the interest of a number of linguists in a paralleI or related development of semantics. For the most part quite independ ently, many philosophers and logicians have reeently been applying formai semantic methods to structures increasingly like naturallanguages. While differenees in training, method and vocabulary tend to veil the fact, philosophers and linguists are converging, it seerns, on a common set of interrelated probiems. Sinee philosophers and linguists are working on the same, or very similar, probiems, it would obviously be instructive to compare notes." --

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Language Querying

Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Language Querying PDF Author: James Clifford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521602747
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Connects the semantics of databases to that of natural language, and links them through a common view of the semantics of time.

Knowledge Representation and the Semantics of Natural Language

Knowledge Representation and the Semantics of Natural Language PDF Author: Hermann Helbig
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540299661
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 652

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Book Description
Natural Language is not only the most important means of communication between human beings, it is also used over historical periods for the pres- vation of cultural achievements and their transmission from one generation to the other. During the last few decades, the ?ood of digitalized information has been growing tremendously. This tendency will continue with the globali- tion of information societies and with the growing importance of national and international computer networks. This is one reason why the theoretical und- standing and the automated treatment of communication processes based on natural language have such a decisive social and economic impact. In this c- text, the semantic representation of knowledge originally formulated in natural language plays a central part, because it connects all components of natural language processing systems, be they the automatic understanding of natural language (analysis), the rational reasoning over knowledge bases, or the g- eration of natural language expressions from formal representations. This book presents a method for the semantic representation of natural l- guage expressions (texts, sentences, phrases, etc. ) which can be used as a u- versal knowledge representation paradigm in the human sciences, like lingu- tics, cognitive psychology, or philosophy of language, as well as in com- tational linguistics and in arti?cial intelligence. It is also an attempt to close the gap between these disciplines, which to a large extent are still working separately.

Semantics-Oriented Natural Language Processing

Semantics-Oriented Natural Language Processing PDF Author: Vladimir Fomichov A.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387729267
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Gluecklich, die wissen, dass hinter allen Sprachen das Unsaegliche steht. Those are happy who know that behind all languages there is something unsaid Rainer Maria Rilke This book shows in a new way that a solution to a fundamental problem from one scienti?c ?eld can help to ?nd the solutions to important problems emerged in several other ?elds of science and technology. In modern science, the term “Natural Language” denotes the collection of all such languages that every language is used as a primary means of communication by people belonging to any country or any region. So Natural Language (NL) includes, in particular, the English, Russian, and German languages. The applied computer systems processing natural language printed or written texts (NL-texts) or oral speech with respect to the fact that the words are associated with some meanings are called semantics-oriented natural language processing s- tems (NLPSs). On one hand, this book is a snapshot of the current stage of a research p- gram started many years ago and called Integral Formal Semantics (IFS) of NL. The goal of this program has been to develop the formal models and methods he- ing to overcome the dif?culties of logical character associated with the engineering of semantics-oriented NLPSs. The designers of such systems of arbitrary kinds will ?nd in this book the formal means and algorithms being of great help in their work.

Introduction to Natural Language Semantics

Introduction to Natural Language Semantics PDF Author: Henriëtte de Swart
Publisher: Stanford Univ Center for the Study
ISBN: 9781575861388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This introduction examines the semantics of natural languages.