scholarly journals Neodavidsonianism in Semantics and Syntax

2019 ◽  
pp. 286-313
Author(s):  
Terje Lohndal
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Original Insight ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Event Variable

This chapter discusses the impact and development of Donald Davidson’s original proposal that there is an event variable in the logical forms that encode meaning in natural languages. Originally, Davidson was concerned with adjuncts and their entailments, but this chapter demonstrates how these insights were extended to apply to thematic arguments. It is argued that there is a family of Neodavidsonian proposals that all have in common that they argue for Neodavidsonian logical forms. However, they differ substantially in how they derive these logical forms, notably in what assumptions they make concerning the syntactic structure that serves as an input to the semantic interpretation. The chapter provides an overview of some of the different approaches, closing by defending a view that can be viewed as a natural consequence of the original insight due to Davidson: not only event predicates, but also argument predicates are linked together by way of conjunction.

Dependency Parsing

2011 ◽  
pp. 449-455
Author(s):  
Ruket Çakici
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Dependency Parsing ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Functional Representation ◽  
Statistical Dependency ◽  
Direct Dependency

Annotated data have recently become more important, and thus more abundant, in computational linguistics . They are used as training material for machine learning systems for a wide variety of applications from Parsing to Machine Translation (Quirk et al., 2005). Dependency representation is preferred for many languages because linguistic and semantic information is easier to retrieve from the more direct dependency representation. Dependencies are relations that are defined on words or smaller units where the sentences are divided into its elements called heads and their arguments, e.g. verbs and objects. Dependency parsing aims to predict these dependency relations between lexical units to retrieve information, mostly in the form of semantic interpretation or syntactic structure. Parsing is usually considered as the first step of Natural Language Processing (NLP). To train statistical parsers, a sample of data annotated with necessary information is required. There are different views on how informative or functional representation of natural language sentences should be. There are different constraints on the design process such as: 1) how intuitive (natural) it is, 2) how easy to extract information from it is, and 3) how appropriately and unambiguously it represents the phenomena that occur in natural languages. In this article, a review of statistical dependency parsing for different languages will be made and current challenges of designing dependency treebanks and dependency parsing will be discussed.

Dependency Parsing

2012 ◽  
pp. 2117-2124
Author(s):  
Ruket Çakici
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Computational Linguistics ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Dependency Parsing ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Functional Representation ◽  
Statistical Dependency ◽  
Direct Dependency

Annotated data have recently become more important, and thus more abundant, in computational linguistics . They are used as training material for machine learning systems for a wide variety of applications from Parsing to Machine Translation (Quirk et al., 2005). Dependency representation is preferred for many languages because linguistic and semantic information is easier to retrieve from the more direct dependency representation. Dependencies are relations that are defined on words or smaller units where the sentences are divided into its elements called heads and their arguments, e.g. verbs and objects. Dependency parsing aims to predict these dependency relations between lexical units to retrieve information, mostly in the form of semantic interpretation or syntactic structure. Parsing is usually considered as the first step of Natural Language Processing (NLP). To train statistical parsers, a sample of data annotated with necessary information is required. There are different views on how informative or functional representation of natural language sentences should be. There are different constraints on the design process such as: 1) how intuitive (natural) it is, 2) how easy to extract information from it is, and 3) how appropriately and unambiguously it represents the phenomena that occur in natural languages. In this article, a review of statistical dependency parsing for different languages will be made and current challenges of designing dependency treebanks and dependency parsing will be discussed.

Linguistic Data Model for Natural Languages and Artificial Intelligence. Part 5. Introduction to Logic

Discourse ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
O. M. Polyakov
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
General View ◽  
World Model ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
Linguistic Aspect

Introduction. The article continues the series of publications on the linguistics of relations (hereinafter R–linguistics) and is devoted to an introduction to the logic of natural language in relation to the approach considered in the series. The problem of natural language logic still remains relevant, since this logic differs significantly from traditional mathematical logic. Moreover, with the appearance of artificial intelligence systems, the importance of this problem only increases. The article analyzes logical problems that prevent the application of classical logic methods to natural languages. This is possible because R-linguistics forms the semantics of a language in the form of world model structures in which language sentences are interpreted.Methodology and sources. The results obtained in the previous parts of the series are used as research tools. To develop the necessary mathematical representations in the field of logic and semantics, the formulated concept of the interpretation operator is used.Results and discussion. The problems that arise when studying the logic of natural language in the framework of R–linguistics are analyzed. These issues are discussed in three aspects: the logical aspect itself; the linguistic aspect; the aspect of correlation with reality. A very General approach to language semantics is considered and semantic axioms of the language are formulated. The problems of the language and its logic related to the most General view of semantics are shown.Conclusion. It is shown that the application of mathematical logic, regardless of its type, to the study of natural language logic faces significant problems. This is a consequence of the inconsistency of existing approaches with the world model. But it is the coherence with the world model that allows us to build a new logical approach. Matching with the model means a semantic approach to logic. Even the most General view of semantics allows to formulate important results about the properties of languages that lack meaning. The simplest examples of semantic interpretation of traditional logic demonstrate its semantic problems (primarily related to negation).

scholarly journals THE IMPACT OF QIRA’ATS ON PRAYER REGULATIONS

2018 ◽  
pp. 81-94
Author(s):  
Safet Husejnović
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
The Impact

Qira'ats present a very significant study of the Qur'an in terms of understanding and interpreting the Qur'anic text. They are not only exotic styles of voice variations and modulation, but an integral part of the language of the Qur'an, its lexical, morphological and syntactic structure. Understanding that aspect is a prerequisite for a correct interpretation of the greatest part of the Qur'anic text. The Qur'an is the first source of Islamic law. Based on its text, general and specific Sharia norms were derived. This aspect of the Qur'an has always been a subject of interest for numerous Islamic scholars in the context of the interpretation of normative ayats – ayat al-ahkam. The Exalted Allah orders Muslims to keep their prayers, perform them at a certain time, and in particular, the middle prayer. There are different opinions of Islamic scholars regarding the dilemma: which is the middle prayer? Following the Hadith of the Prophet of Allah, s .a.w.s., we find out it is the Asr prayer. Furthermore, the hazrat Aisha 's narration and the Qira'at Ubejj ibn Ka'ba confirmed the attitude of the majority of Islamic scholars that the middle prayer is the Asr prayer. This paper presents the Sharia-legal comments of well-known Islamic scholars about prayer regulations, but only from the aspect of Qira'ats. In addition, the paper shows how and to what extent Islamic scholars relied on Qira'ats while establishing, deriving and presenting Sharia norms, starting from the fact that Mezhep- legal dispute, to a certain extent, arouse from different Qira'ats, as well as from different morphological, grammatical and stylistic analyses.

scholarly journals Assessment of Undergraduates’ Real-World Outcomes of Critical Thinking in Everyday Situations

2017 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda R. Franco ◽  
Patrício S. Costa ◽  
Heather A. Butler ◽  
Leandro S. Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Real World ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Negative Life Events ◽  
Self Report ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Portuguese Version ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
The Impact

Critical thinking is a kind of “good” thinking that integrates a set of cognitive skills and dispositions to use those skills with knowledge to increase the chances of success in academic settings, job market, and daily life. The impact of critical thinking on life events, in face of everyday decisions and challenges, is still unclear, and further research is needed. In this exploratory study, a sample of 230 first-year students of a Bachelor’s Degree or a Master’s Degree in Portugal completed an experimental Portuguese version of the Real-World Outcomes, a self-report inventory measuring everyday negative life events that are mediated by a lack of critical thinking. Based on exploratory factor analysis results and theoretical premises, changes were made to the Portuguese version of the inventory that was administered, and items were aggregated into six dimensions, creating a new version that is more familiar to Portuguese young adults in college. This original proposal of the inventory presents six types of negative life events resulting from a lack of critical thinking: health neglect, mismanagement, slackness, poor impulse control, academic negligence, and rashness. Both limitations and future potentialities of this version are presented.

University students involved in a sustainable world: assessing sustainable consumption in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Margaça ◽  
Brizeida Hernández Sánchez ◽  
José Carlos Sánchez-García
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
Responsible Consumption ◽  
The Impact

Purpose To achieve sustainable development to protect the environment and society, an increasing number of scholars have conducted in-depth research on sustainable and responsible consumption behaviors. The outputs demonstrate that consumers are increasingly concerned and aware of the issues associated with the excessive use of resources. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the validity and reliability of the Sustainable Consumption Scale (SC-S) in the Spanish context. Design/methodology/approach The adaptation of SC-S to Spanish was carried out in accordance with international methodological standards. The Spanish version of this scale was applied empirically to the research sample was composed of 962 university students (49.1% male and 50.9% female) from 54 Universities in 15 regions of Spain that participated in the study. Findings The analyses carried out to verify the psychometric properties retained 16 items from the original proposal, grouped equally in three factors: Cognitive – six items; Affective – seven items; and Conative – four items. The scale presented adequate adjustment indexes, as well as optimal values of the different measures of reliability, recommended by the literature. Originality/value This instrument can be used by the Spanish academic community, which will contribute to the assessment and prediction regarding a sustainable consumption attitude. From these screenings, it will be also possible to understand the impact and development of the objectives outlined by Agenda 2030.

scholarly journals Emotion-Semantic-Enhanced Bidirectional LSTM with Multi-Head Attention Mechanism for Microblog Sentiment Analysis

Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 280
Author(s):  
Shaoxiu Wang ◽  
Yonghua Zhu ◽  
Wenjing Gao ◽  
Meng Cao ◽  
Mengyao Li
Keyword(s):  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Attention Mechanism ◽  
Feature Representation ◽  
Mechanism Model ◽  
Hidden Layer ◽  
The Impact

The sentiment analysis of microblog text has always been a challenging research field due to the limited and complex contextual information. However, most of the existing sentiment analysis methods for microblogs focus on classifying the polarity of emotional keywords while ignoring the transition or progressive impact of words in different positions in the Chinese syntactic structure on global sentiment, as well as the utilization of emojis. To this end, we propose the emotion-semantic-enhanced bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network with the multi-head attention mechanism model (EBILSTM-MH) for sentiment analysis. This model uses BiLSTM to learn feature representation of input texts, given the word embedding. Subsequently, the attention mechanism is used to assign the attentive weights of each words to the sentiment analysis based on the impact of emojis. The attentive weights can be combined with the output of the hidden layer to obtain the feature representation of posts. Finally, the sentiment polarity of microblog can be obtained through the dense connection layer. The experimental results show the feasibility of our proposed model on microblog sentiment analysis when compared with other baseline models.

Situationally independent prosodic phrasing

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari R. Speer ◽  
Paul Warren ◽  
Amy J. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
American Midwest ◽  
The Impact

AbstractA series of speech production and categorization experiments demonstrates that naïve speakers and listeners reliably use correspondences between prosodic phrasing and syntactic constituent structure to resolve standing and temporary ambiguity. Materials obtained from a co-operative gameboard task show that prosodic phrasing effects (e.g., the location of the strongest break in an utterance) are independent of discourse factors that might be expected to influence the impact of syntactic ambiguity, including the availability of visual referents for the meanings of ambiguous utterances and the use of utterances as instructions versus confirmations of instructions. These effects hold across two dialects of English, spoken in the American Midwest, and New Zealand. Results from PP-attachment and verb transitivity ambiguities indicate clearly that the production of prosody-syntax correspondences is not conditional upon situational disambiguation of syntactic structure, but is rather more directly tied to grammatical constraints on the production of prosodic and syntactic form. Differences between our results and those reported elsewhere are best explained in terms of differences in task demands.

Response Systems: The Syntax and Semantics of Fragment Answers and Response Particles

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-287
Author(s):  
M.Teresa Espinal ◽  
Susagna Tubau
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Fragment Answers ◽  
Sentential Form ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Response Systems ◽  
Negative Adverb

This article critically reviews the main research issues raised in the study of response systems in natural languages by addressing the syntax and semantics of fragment answers and yes/no response particles. Fragment answers include replies that do not have a sentential form, whereas response particles consist solely of an affirmative or a negative adverb. While the main research question in the syntax of fragments and response particles has been whether these contain more syntactic structure than what is actually pronounced, the key issues in the study of their semantics are question–answer congruence, the anaphoric potential of response particles, and the meaning of fragments in relation to positive and negative questions. In connection to these issues, this review suggests some interesting avenues for further research: ( a) providing an analysis of particles other than yes/no, ( b) choosing between echoic versus nonechoic forms as answers to polar questions, and ( c) deciding whether some non-lexically-based or nonverbal responses are systematically used in combination with polar particles to express (dis)agreement.

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