Skip to main content

Principle-Based Interpretation of Natural Language Quantifiers

  • Chapter

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 44))

Abstract

The interpretation of quantifiers is one of the central problems of natural language understanding. Quantifiers include expressions such as everyone, many students, and the professor that skates. Given a suitably general notion of ‘quantifier’, few natural language sentences contain no quantifiers. On some accounts, all natural language sentences contain quantifiers. This chapter describes a working prototype, called QSB (Quantifier Scopes and Bindings), that determines possible relative quantifier scopes and pronoun bindings for natural language sentences, with coverage of a variety of problematic cases.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD   169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Aoun, J. and A. Li: to appear, The Syntax of Scope, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aoun, J. and S. Epstein: 1988, ‘Relative Quantifier Scope’, paper presented at CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, City University of New York, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barwise, J.: 1986, Noun Phrases, Generalized Quantifiers, and Anaphora Report number CSLI-86-52, CSLI, Stanford University, Stanford, California.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barton, E., R. Berwick, and E. Ristad: 1987, Computational Complexity and Natural Language, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berwick, R.: 1987, 1991 forthcoming, ‘Principle-Based Parsing’, in T. Sells, S. Shieber, and T. Wasow (eds.), Foundational Issues in Natural Language Processing, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Also MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Technical Report Number 972, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brennan, S., M. Friedman, and C. Pollard: 1987, ‘A Centering Approach to Pronouns’, Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 155–162.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, N.: 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht, Holland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heim, I.: 1982, The Semantics of Indefinite and Definite Noun Phrases, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka, J. and L. Carlson: 1979, ‘Conditionals, Generic Quantifiers, and Other Applications of Subgames’, in F. Guenthner and S. Schmidt (eds.), Formal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, pp. 1–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hintikka, J. and J. Kulas: 1983, ‘Definite Descriptions in Game-Theoretical Semantics’, in J. Hintikka and J. Kulas (eds.), The Game of Language, Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, pp. 137–160.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hobbs, J. and S. Shieber: 1987, ‘An Algorithm for Generating Quantifier Scopings’, Computational Linguistics, 13, 47–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M.: this volume, ‘Parsing as Deduction: The Use of Knowledge of Language’, pp. 39–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, M. and E. Klein: 1986, ‘Discourse, Anaphora, and Parsing’, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, International Committee on Computational Linguistics, pp. 669–675.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamp, H.: 1981, ‘A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation’, in J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen, and M. Stokhof (eds.), Formal Methods in the Study of Language, Part 1, Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, Holland, pp. 277–322.

    Google Scholar 

  • Karttunen, L.: 1969, ‘Discourse Referents’, in J. McCawley (ed.), Notes From the Linguistic Underground, Academic Press, New York, pp 363–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keenan, E.: 1974, ‘The Functional Principle: Generalizing the Notion “Subject Of” ’, in M. LaGaly, R. Fox and A. Bruck (eds.), Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, Illinois, pp. 298–309.

    Google Scholar 

  • May, R.: 1977, The Grammar of Quantification, Ph.D. dissertation, MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • May, R.: 1985, Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Riemsdijk, H. and E. Williams: 1986, Introduction to the Theory of Grammar, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Epstein, S.S. (1991). Principle-Based Interpretation of Natural Language Quantifiers. In: Berwick, R.C., Abney, S.P., Tenny, C. (eds) Principle-Based Parsing. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 44. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3474-3_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3474-3_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-1637-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-3474-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics