Abstract
Dependency Tree Semantics (DTS) is a formalism that allows to underspecify quantifier scope ambiguities. This paper provides an introduction of DTS and highlights its linguistic and computational advantages. From a linguistics point of view, DTS is able to represent the so-called Branching Quantifier readings, i.e. those readings in which two or more quantifiers have to be evaluated in parallel. From a computational point of view, DTS features an easy syntax–semantics interface wrt a Dependency Grammar and allows for incremental disambiguations.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Alshawi, H.: The Core Language Engine, pp. 32–39. Mit Press, Cambridge, UK (1992)
Barwise, J.: On branching quantifiers in English. The Journal of Philosophical Logic 8, 47–80 (1979)
Bos, J.: Predicate Logic Unplugged. In: Proc. Of the 10th Amsterdam Colloquium, Amsterdam, pp. 133–142 (1996)
Bosco, C.: A grammatical relation system for treebank annotation. PhD thesis, University of Turin (2004)
Bosco, C., Lombardo, V.: A relation schema for treebank annotation. In: Cappelli, A., Turini, F. (eds.) AI*IA 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2829, pp. 462–473. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Bunt, H.: Underspecification in Semantic Representations: Which Technique for What Purpose? In: Proc. of the 5th Workshop on Computational Semantics, Tilburg, The Netherlands, pp. 37–54 (2003)
Copestake, A., Flickinger, D., Sag, I.A.: Minimal Recursion Semantics. An introduction. Manuscript, Stanford University (1999)
Debusmann, R.: Extensible Dependency Grammar: A Modular Grammar Formalism Based On Multigraph Description. PhD thesis, Saarland University (2006)
Ebert, C.: Formal Investigations of Underspecified Representations. PhD thesis, Department of Computer Science, King’s College London (2005)
Egg, M., Koller, A., Niehren, J.: The Constraint Language for Lambda Structures. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10, 457–485 (2001)
Farkas, D.: Dependent Indefinites and Direct Scope. In: Condoravdi, C., Renardel, G. (eds.) Logical Perspectives on Language and Information, Stanford. CSLI Lecture Notes, pp. 41–72 (2001)
Fodor, J., Sag, I.: Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 5, 355–398 (1982)
Hintikka, J.: Quantifiers vs Quantification Theory. Dialectica 27, 329–358 (1973)
Hobbs, J.R., Shieber, S.: An Algorithm for Generating Quantifier Scoping. Computational Linguistics 13, 47–63 (1987)
Hudson, R.: English word grammar. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, Cambridge (1990)
Kamp, H., Reyle, U.: From Discourse to Logic. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1993)
Joshi, A.K., Schabes, Y.: Tree-Adjoining Grammars. In: Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (eds.) Handbook of Formal Languages, pp. 69–123. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)
Joshi, A.K., Kallmeyer, L.: Factoring Predicate Argument and Scope Semantics: Underspecified Semantics with LTAG. Research on Language and Computation 1, 3–58 (2003)
Joshi, A.K., Kallmeyer, L., Romero, M.: Flexible Composition in LTAG: Quantifier Scope and Inverse Linking. In: Musken, R., Bunt, H. (eds.) Computing Meaning, vol. 3, Kluwer, Dordrecht (2003)
Lesmo, L., Lombardo, V.: Transformed Subcategorization Frames in Chunk Parsing. In: LREC 2002. Proc. of the 3rd Int. Conf. on Language Resources and Evaluation, Las Palmas, pp. 512–519 (2002)
Lev, I.: Decoupling Scope Resolution from Semantic Composition. In: Proc. 6th Workshop on Computational Semantics, Tilburg, the Netherlands, pp. 139–150 (2005)
Mel’cuk, I.: Dependency syntax: theory and practice. SUNY University Press (1988)
Moran, D.B.: Quantifier scoping in the SRI core language engine. In: Proc. of the 26th annual meeting on ACL, Buffalo, New York, pp. 33–40 (1988)
Park, J.: A Lexical Theory of Quantification in Ambiguous Query Interpretation. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, USA (1996)
Pereira, F.: A calculus for semantic composition and scoping. In: Proc. of the 27th annual meeting on ACL, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 152–160 (1988)
Reinhart, T.: Quantifier-Scope: How labor is divided between QR and choice functions. Linguistics and Philosophy 20, 335–397 (1997)
Reyle, U.: Dealing with ambiguities by Underspecification: Construction, Representation and Deduction. Journal of Semantics, 123–179 (1993)
Reyle, U.: Co-Indexing Labelled DRSs to Represent and Reason with Ambiguities. In: Peters, S., van Deemter, K. (eds.) Semantic Ambiguity and Underspecification, Stanford, pp. 239–268 (1996)
Robaldo, L.: Dependency Tree Semantics. PhD thesis, University of Turin, Italy (2007)
Sher, G.: Ways of branching quantifiers. Linguistics and Philosophy 13, 393–422 (1990)
Sher, G.: Partially-ordered (branching) generalized quantifiers: a general definition. The Journal of Philosophical Logic 26, 1–43 (1997)
Steedman, M.: Surface-Compositional Scope-Alternation Without Existential Quantifiers. Draft 5.1, for comments (2006)
van Genabith, J., Crouch, R.: F-Structures, QLFs and UDRSs. In: Proc. of the the 1st Int1 Conference on LFG, pp. 190–205. CSLI Publications, Stanford, CA (1996)
Webber, B. L.: A Formal Approach to Discourse Anaphora PhD thesis, Harvard University, USA (1999)
Winter, Y.: Choice Functions and the Scopal Semantics of Indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 20(4), 399–467 (1997)
Winter, Y.: Distributivity and Dependency. Natural Language Semantics 8, 27–69 (2000)
Winter, Y.: Functional Quantification. Research on Language and Computation 2, 331–363 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Robaldo, L. (2007). Dependency Tree Semantics: Branching Quantification in Underspecification. In: Basili, R., Pazienza, M.T. (eds) AI*IA 2007: Artificial Intelligence and Human-Oriented Computing. AI*IA 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4733. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74782-6_33
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74782-6_33
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74781-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74782-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)