Quantification

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Brasoveanu ◽  
Jakub Dotlačil
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Quantifier Scope ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
Scope Assignment ◽  
Key Questions

Quantification is abundant in natural language and is one of the most studied topics in generative grammar. Sentences with multiple quantifiers are famously ambiguous with respect to their quantifier scope, representing a type of ambiguity related to, but not necessary the same as, structural ambiguity. Two key questions in the psycholinguistic study of quantification are: (i) how does the human processor assign quantifier scope? and (ii) how and under what circumstances is this scope assignment reanalysed? The investigation of these questions lies at the intersection of psycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics. The chapter summarizes both strands of research, and discusses experimental data that played an essential role in the (psycho)linguistic theorizing about the topic of processing quantification and quantifier scope.

scholarly journals A Machine Learning Approach to Modeling Scope Preferences

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick Higgins ◽  
Jerrold M. Sadock
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Quantifier Scope ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Machine Learning Approach ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scope Reading ◽  
Syntactic Annotation

This article describes a corpus-based investigation of quantifier scope preferences. Following recent work on multimodular grammar frameworks in theoretical linguistics and a long history of combining multiple information sources in natural language processing, scope is treated as a distinct module of grammar from syntax. This module incorporates multiple sources of evidence regarding the most likely scope reading for a sentence and is entirely data-driven. The experiments discussed in this article evaluate the performance of our models in predicting the most likely scope reading for a particular sentence, using Penn Treebank data both with and without syntactic annotation. We wish to focus attention on the issue of determining scope preferences, which has largely been ignored in theoretical linguistics, and to explore different models of the interaction between syntax and quantifier scope.

scholarly journals A generalised quantifier theory of natural language in categorical compositional distributional semantics with bialgebras

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (06) ◽  
pp. 783-809
Author(s):  
Jules Hedges ◽  
Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Vector Space ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Distributional Semantics ◽  
Compositional Semantics ◽  
Finite Dimensional ◽  
Linear Maps ◽  
First Time ◽  
Quantifier Theory ◽  
Compositional Distributional Semantics

AbstractCategorical compositional distributional semantics is a model of natural language; it combines the statistical vector space models of words with the compositional models of grammar. We formalise in this model the generalised quantifier theory of natural language, due to Barwise and Cooper. The underlying setting is a compact closed category with bialgebras. We start from a generative grammar formalisation and develop an abstract categorical compositional semantics for it, and then instantiate the abstract setting to sets and relations and to finite-dimensional vector spaces and linear maps. We prove the equivalence of the relational instantiation to the truth theoretic semantics of generalised quantifiers. The vector space instantiation formalises the statistical usages of words and enables us to, for the first time, reason about quantified phrases and sentences compositionally in distributional semantics.

Vibrational Dephasing and Collision Induced Scattering in Molecular Liquids

1983 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiri Jonas
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
High Pressure ◽  
Temperature Effects ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Molecular Liquids ◽  
Vibrational Dephasing

ABSTRACTThe results of several Raman studies of vibrational dephasing in polyatomic molecular liquids at high pressure are reviewed. The density and temperature effects on vibrational dephasing of isotropic Raman bands for different vibrational models are reported for the following liquids: C(CH3)4; Si(CH3)4; Ge(CH3)4; ; Sn(CH3)4 and isobutylene CH2; = C(CH3) 2.The experimental data are used to test the current theoretical models of vibrational dephasing. Selected results of our high pressure experiments on collision induced scattering in polyatomic molecular liquids demonstrate well the essential role of high pressure in studying these phenomena.

Convergence issues in baryon chiral perturbation theory for the reaction π + N → 2π + N

2007 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. 663-669
Author(s):  
N Mobed ◽  
J Zhang ◽  
D Singh
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Perturbation Theory ◽  
Chiral Perturbation Theory ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Heavy Baryon ◽  
Transverse Polarization ◽  
Proton Target ◽  
Chiral Perturbation ◽  
Target Asymmetry ◽  
Chiral Order

We study the reaction π + N → 2π + N within the framework of heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory of chiral order three. We find that contributions from amplitudes of chiral order three are large and play an essential role in reproducing the experimental data. In addition, we evaluate a polarization observable (target asymmetry) for the transverse polarization of the proton target and find that the asymmetry is generally small for the reaction under consideration. PACS Nos.: 25.80.Hp, 13.75.Gx, 11.30.Rd, 11.10.Ef

scholarly journals Introducing Continuations

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Chris Barker
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Compositional Analysis ◽  
New Technique ◽  
Quantifier Scope ◽  
Scope Ambiguity ◽  
Syntactic Movement ◽  
Working Paper ◽  
A New Technique ◽  
Empirical Generalizations

This working paper introduces CONTINUATIONS (a concept borrowed from computer science) as a new technique for characterizing certain aspects of the semantics of a natural language. I should emphasize at the outset that this is just an introduction, and that more a rigorous and thorough treatment is under development (see Barker (ms)). In the meantime, this paper mentions certain formal results without proving them, and describes certain new empirical generalizations without exploring them. What it will do is provide an explicit account of a range of familiar phenomena relat­ed to quantification, including quantifier scope ambiguity, NP as a scope island, and generalized coordination. What makes the account noteworthy is that it provides a fully and strictly compositional analysis of quantification and generalized coordina­tion that does not rely on syntactic movement operations such as Quantifier Move­ment, auxiliary storage mechanisms such as Cooper Storage, or type ambiguity as in Hendriks' Flexible Types system.

scholarly journals Search for the Relation of Form and Function Using the ForFun Database

2018 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Marie Mikulová ◽  
Eduard Bejček ◽  
Eva Hajičová ◽  
Jarmila Panevová
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
International Workshop ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
And Function ◽  
Annotated Corpora ◽  
Function Relation

Abstract The aim of the contribution is to introduce a database of linguistic forms and their functions built with the use of the multi-layer annotated corpora of Czech, the Prague Dependency Treebanks. The purpose of the Prague Database of Forms and Functions (ForFun) is to help the linguists to study the form-function relation, which we assume to be one of the principal tasks of both theoretical linguistics and natural language processing. We demonstrate possibilities of the exploitation of the ForFun database. This article is largely based on a paper presented at the 16th International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories in Prague (Bejček et al., 2017).

scholarly journals Computational Linguistics without Linguistics? View from Prague

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Hajičová
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language Processing ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Formal Description ◽  
Functional Linguistics ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Theoretical Side

We want to demonstrate on some selected linguistic issues that classical structural and functional linguistics even with its seemingly traditional approaches has something to offer to a formal description of language and its applications in natural language processing and to illustrate by a brief reference to Functional Generative Grammar (on the theoretical side of CL) and Prague Dependency Treebank (on the applicational side) a possible interaction between linguistics and CL.

scholarly journals A note on Fukui’s note

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng-Yu Edwin Tsai
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Quantifier Scope

Abstract This commentary relates Fukui’s (2015) note on weak vs. strong generation to two aspects of quantification in Chinese: quantifier scope and the syntactic licensing conditions of noninterrogative wh-expressions. It is shown that the phenomena under discussion echo Fukui’s (2015) view that only strong generation allows for a deeper understanding of natural language and that dependencies are to be distinguished structurally.

Towards a Bio-Inspired Theoretical Linguistics to Model Man-Machine Communication

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-28
Author(s):  
Gemma Bel-Enguix ◽  
M. Dolores Jiménez-López
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Dna Computing ◽  
Membrane Computing ◽  
Theoretical Computer Science ◽  
Theoretical Computer ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
Machine Communication ◽  
Natural Description

The paper provides an overview of what could be a new biological-inspired linguistics. The authors discuss some reasons for attempting a more natural description of natural language, lying on new theories of molecular biology and their formalization within the area of theoretical computer science. The authors especially explore three bio-inspired models of computation –DNA computing, membrane computing and networks of evolutionary processors (NEPs) – and their possibilities for achieving a simpler, more natural, and mathematically consistent theoretical linguistics.

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