3,711 research outputs found
Johan Bos
No full textthis paper we describe the syntax and semantics of a description language for underspecified semantic representations. This concept is discussed in general and in particular applied to Predicate Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. The reason for exploring underspecified representations as suitable semantic representations for natural language expressions emerges directly from practical natural language processing applications. The so-called Combinatorial Explosion Puzzle, a well known problem in this area, can succesfully be tackled by using underspecified representations. The source of this problem, scopal ambiguities in natural language expressions, is discussed in section 2. The core of the paper presents Hole Semantics. This is a general proposal for a framework, in principle suitable for any logic, where underspecified representations play a central role. There is a clear separation between the object language (the logical language one is interested in) and the meta language (the language that describes and interprets underspecified structures). It has been noted by various authors that the meaning of an underspecified semantic representation cannot be expressed in terms of a disjunction of denotations, but rather as a set of denotations (cf. Poesio 1994). We support this view, and use it as underlying principle for the definition of the semantic interpretation function of underspecified structures. Section 3 is an informal introduction to Hole Semantics, and in section 4 things are formally defined. In section 5 we apply Hole Semantics to Predicate Logic, resulting in an "unplugged" version of (static and dynamic) Predicate Logic. In section 6 we show that this idea easily carries over to Discourse Representation Structures. A lot of attention has been paid..
Report of Governor Johan Rising, 1655, on New Sweden
No full textGovernor Johan Rising reports to the Swedish government and royalty on the status of New Sweden (present-day New Jersey). He also reports on other Swedish colonies in the area. He asks that single women and skilled tradesmen be sent to the colonies. Rising also reports that attacks from neighboring Indian tribes are increasing. He has found some protection by forming an alliance with English settlers, but the cost is high, and his colony owes the English money and supplies. Rising asks that Sweden send them money so that they can pay off their debts, build ships that would establish a trading dominance with the West Indies, and cultivate land and crops to gain more profit. Reports from New World governors were sent back to their native countries via ships. Rising sent this report in June of 1655, but Sweden did not recieve the report until November of 1655. This article is part of a Primary Source Material collection compiled by the New Sweden Commemorative Commission in 1988
Report of Governor Johan Printz, 1647, on New Sweden
No full textGovern Johan Printz, the governor of New Sweden (later to become New Jersey), reports on the status of the colony and the settlers. Many freemen have arrived to settle in New Sweden, but the criminals and military men who were conscripted to the colony want to return to Sweden. Of the freemen, very few are skilled, so Governor Printz asks that blacksmiths, tanners, tailors, carpenters, and butchers be sent to the colony. Additionally, he asks for single women. Printz also reports on two new Swedish colonies that have been established along the Delaware River. However, Dutch settlers have become very aggressive by re-purchasing land from the Indians that the Swedish had already bought. They are also interrupting trade between the Swedes and the Indians, as well as instigating the Indians to attack the Swedes. Printz directed the construction of some storage houses along common trade routes to win back trade from the Indians. However, fighting has erupted between different Native tribes as each tries to establish dominance in trading with the colonies. This article is part of a Primary Source Material collection compiled by the New Sweden Commemorative Commission in 1988
Relation of the surrender of New Sweden, by Governor Johan Clason Rising, 1655
No full textGovernor Johan Rising of New Sweden reports to Sweden on the August 1655 Dutch attack on New Sweden's Fort Christina. The Dutch traveled from New Amsterdam (present-day New York) and easily captured a New Sweden outpost. Rising sent men to the outpost to fend of the Dutch, but the Dutch defeated them and took them as prisoners, leaving Fort Christina without fighting men and supplies. The Dutch then put the Fort under seige. A few days later, Rising surrendered the Fort. He and the Swedish colonists were ordered to either return to Sweden, or to remain in the New World in service to the Dutch. This article is part of a Primary Source Material collection compiled by the New Sweden Commemorative Commission in 1988
Separating Argument Structure from Logical Structure in AMR
Full text linkThe AMR (Abstract Meaning Representation) formalism for representing meaning of natural language sentences puts emphasis on predicate-argument structure and was not designed to deal with scope and quantifiers. By extending AMR with indices for contexts and formulating constraints on these contexts, a formalism is derived that makes correct predictions for inferences involving negation and bound variables. The attractive core predicate-argument structure of AMR is preserved. The resulting framework is similar to the meaning representations of Discourse Representation Theory employed in the Parallel Meaning Bank
Separating Argument Structure from Logical Structure in AMR
Full text linkThe AMR (Abstract Meaning Representation) formalism for representing meaning of natural language sentences puts emphasis on predicate-argument structure and was not designed to deal with scope and quantifiers. By extending AMR with indices for contexts and formulating constraints on these contexts, a formalism is derived that makes correct predictions for inferences involving negation and bound variables. The attractive core predicate-argument structure of AMR is preserved. The resulting framework is similar to the meaning representations of Discourse Representation Theory employed in the Parallel Meaning Bank
DRS at MRP 2020: Dressing up Discourse Representation Structures as Graphs
Full text linkDiscourse Representation Theory (DRT) is a formal account for representing the meaning of natural language discourse. Meaning in DRT is modeled via a Discourse Representation Structure (DRS), a meaning representation with a model-theoretic interpretation, which is usually depicted as nested boxes. In contrast, a directed labeled graph is a common data structure used to encode semantics of natural language texts. The paper describes the procedure of dressing up DRSs as directed labeled graphs to include DRT as a new framework in the 2020 shared task on Cross-Framework and Cross-Lingual Meaning Representation Parsing. Since one of the goals of the shared task is to encourage unified models for several semantic graph frameworks, the conversion procedure was biased towards making the DRT graph framework somewhat similar to other graph-based meaning representation frameworks
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