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The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation pp 79–96Cite as

A Bridge from the Use-Mention Distinction to Natural Language Processing

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Part of the book series: Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology ((PEPRPHPS,volume 15))

Abstract

Within computer science, the study of the syntax and semantics of metalanguage is well developed for formal languages, and this work is applied prominently in the creation of programming languages and compilers. However, relatively little work has been done in computer science to address metalanguage in natural languages. This lack has been to the detriment of language technologies that could exploit the information expressed in metalanguage to understand users’ utterances. This chapter addresses metalanguage and quotation from the perspective of mentioned language, a closely related phenomenon, and describes its relevance to core and applied work in natural language processing (NLP), a field in computer science concerned with the interaction between computers and natural languages. Examples are given for how state-of-the-art language technologies fail to cope with mentioned language. Finally, to promote progress on the computational study of mentioned language, a rubric is given for identifying the phenomenon in text. This enables human annotators to work methodically on labeling text to train NLP systems, a crucial precursor to further computational work.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In a manner of speaking, quotation marks provide a name that refers to the quoted word. Hence the quotes-plus-word as a unit is being used to refer to the word inside quotes, and the word itself remains a case of mention. This is not a serious problem, but it foreshadows an issue that will arise later. This chapter will follow convention, however, and speak of a quoted-expression unit as a case of mentioned language (of the item inside quotation marks).

  2. 2.

    For present purposes, truth conditions will be considered equivalent to meaning. However, a substantial body of work exists on articulating the relationship between these two, as surveyed by Lynch (2001) and Kirkham (1995).

  3. 3.

    In fact, previous literature surveys (Anderson et al. 2002; Saka 1998) have shown that nearly all of the proposed theories of the use-mention distinction have required quotation marks to delimit mentioned language. This practice is so widespread that the literature often uses the term quotation to refer to mentioned language, causing confusion over the meaning of the term, as it also refers to the reproduction of language from another source. Reproduction of language is one function of mentioned language but certainly not the only function.

  4. 4.

    The rubric also covers some (but not all) instances of mentioned language where T is produced in a sentence to draw attention primarily to a property of the token of T. This will be discussed further in Sect. 4.3 below.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Shomir Wilson

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  1. Shomir Wilson
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Correspondence to Shomir Wilson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas, Rio Grande, Edinburg, Texas, USA

    Paul Saka

  2. University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong

    Michael Johnson

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Wilson, S. (2017). A Bridge from the Use-Mention Distinction to Natural Language Processing. In: Saka, P., Johnson, M. (eds) The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68747-6_4

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