Download or read book Lexical Representations and the Semantics of Complementation written by Jean Mark Gawron and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1983, this book represents an effort to lay the groundwork for a general approach to lexical semantics that pays heed to the needs of a theory of discourse interpretation, a theory of compositional semantics, and a theory of lexical rules. The first chapter proposes a basic framework in which to undertake lexical description and a lexical semantic analogue to the classical syntactic distinction between subcategorized for complement and adjunct. This apparatus for lexical description is expanded in the second chapter. A theory of the semantics of nuclear terms along with a proposed implementation is presented in chapter three. The fourth chapter argues that a number of regular, semantically governed valence alternations could be captured in frame representations that give rise to various kinds of realisation options. The final chapter examines interaction of these phenomena with a general account of prediction or control along with the general framework of lexical representation.

Download or read book Representation of Cognitive Structures written by Michel Achard and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1998 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the framework of cognitive grammar, investigates the distribution of infinitival and finite complements--indicative and subjunctive--in the French language, emphasizing the causation/perception, modal, conceptualizing subject and impersonal constructions. Presents a fairly large array of constructions that have received considerable attention in the literature, but rather than attempting comprehensiveness, seeks only to demonstrate that French complementation can be considered in a global fashion. Achard believes the findings can be applied to other languages as well. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Exploring Distributional Semantics in Lexical Representations and Narrative Modeling written by Su Wang and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are interested in the computational modeling of lexico-conceptual and narrative knowledge (e.g. how to represent the meaning of cat to reflect facts such as: it is similar to a dog, and it is typically larger than a mouse; how to characterize story, and how to identify different narratives on the same topic). On the lexico-conceptual front, we learn lexical representations with strong interpretability, as well as integrate commonsense knowledge into lexical representations. For narrative modeling, we study how to identify, extract, and generate narratives/stories acceptable to human intuition. As a methodological framework we apply the methods of Distributional Semantics (DS) — “a subfield of Natural Language Processing that learns meaning from word usages” (Herbelot, 2019) — where semantic representations (on any levels such as word, phrases, sentences, etc.) are learned at scale from data through machine learning models (Erk and Padó, 2008; Baroni and Lenci, 2010; Mikolov et al., 2013; Pennington et al., 2014). To infuse interpretability and commonsense into semantic representations (specifically lexical and event), which are typically lacking in previous works (Doran et al., 2017; Gusmao et al., 2018; Carvalho et al., 2019), we complement the data-driven scalability with a minimal amount of human knowledge annotation on a selected set of tasks and have obtained empirical evidence in support of our techniques. For narrative modeling, we draw insights from the rich body of work on scripts and narratives started from Schank and Abelson (1977) and Mooney and DeJong (1985) to Chambers and Jurafsky (2008, 2009), and proposed distributional models for the tasks narrative identification, extraction, and generation which produced state-of-the-art performance. Symbolic approaches to lexical semantics (Wierzbicka, 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2002) and narrative modeling (Schank and Abelson, 1977; Mooney and DeJong, 1985) have been fruitful on the front of theoretical studies. For example, in theoretical linguistics, Wierzbicka defined a small set of lexical semantic primitives from which complex meaning can be built compositionally; in Artificial Intelligence, Schank and Abelson formulated primitive acts which are conceptualized into semantic episodes (i.e. scripts) understandable by humans. Our focus, however, is primarily on computational approaches that need wide lexical coverage, for which DS provides a better toolkit, especially in practical applications. In this thesis, we innovate by building on the “vanilla” DS techniques (Landauer and Dumais, 1997; Mikolov et al., 2013) to address the issues listed above. Specifically, we present empirical evidence that • On the building block level, with the framework of DS, it is possible to learn highly interpretable lexical and event representations at scale and introduce human commonsense knowledge at low cost. • On the narrative level, well-designed DS modeling offers a balance of precision and scalability, solutions which are empirically stronger to complex narrative modeling questions (e.g. narrative identification, extraction and generation). Further, conducting case-studies on lexical and narrative modeling, we showcase the viability of integrating DS with traditional methods in complementation to retain the strengths of both approaches Concretely, the contributions of this thesis are summarized as follows: • Evidence from analyzing/modeling a small set of common concepts which indicates that interpretable representations can be learned for lexical concepts with minimal human annotation to realize one/few-shot learning. • Commonsense integration in lexical semantics: with carefully designed crowdsourcing, and combined with distributional methods, it is possible to substantially improve inference related to physical knowledge of the world. • Neural distributional methods perform strongly in complex narrative modeling tasks, where we demonstrate that the following techniques are particularly useful: 1) human intuition inspired iterative algorithms; 2) integration of graphical and distributional modeling; pre-trained large-scale language models

Download or read book Semantics Lexical Structures and Adjectives written by Claudia Maienborn and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover vital research on the lexical and cognitive meanings of words. In this exciting book from a team of world-class researchers, in-depth articles explain a wide range of topics, including thematic roles, sense relation, ambiguity and comparison. The authors focus on the cognitive and conceptual structure of words and their meaning extensions such as coercion, metaphors and metonymies. The book features highly cited material – available in paperback for the first time since its publication – and is an essential starting point for anyone interested in lexical semantics, especially where it meets other cognitive and conceptual research.

Download or read book Constructing a Lexicon of English Verbs written by Pamela B. Faber and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gives an account of the English verbal lexicon which not only systematizes the meanings of lexemes within a hierarchical framework, but also demonstrates the principled connections between meaning and highlights the syntactic complementation patterns of verbs and the patterns of conceptualization in the human mind. Explains lexical patterning and its relationship with meaning, syntax, and cognition.

Download or read book Semantics Theories written by Claudia Maienborn and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in paperback for the first time since its original publication, the material gathered here is perfect for anyone who needs a detailed and accessible introduction to the important semantic theories. Designed for a wide audience, it will be of great value to linguists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and computer scientists working on natural language. The book covers theories of lexical semantics, cognitively oriented approaches to semantics, compositional theories of sentence semantics, and discourse semantics. This clear, elegant explanation of the key theories in semantics research is essential reading for anyone working in the area.

Download or read book Semantics written by Claudia Maienborn and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011 with total page 989 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Question orientedness and the Semantics of Clausal Complementation written by Wataru Uegaki and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-08 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the compositional semantics of clausal complementation, and proposes a theory in which clause-embedding predicates are uniformly “question-oriented”, i.e., they take a set of propositions as their semantic argument. This theory opens up new horizons for the study of embedded questions and clausal complementation, and presents a successful case study on how lexical semantics interacts with syntax and compositional semantics. It offers new perspectives on issues in epistemology and the philosophy of language, such as the relationship between know-wh and know-that and the nature of attitudinal objects in general. Cross-linguistically, attitude predicates such as know, tell and surprise, can embed both declarative and interrogative clauses. Since these clauses are taken to represent different semantic objects, like propositions and questions, the embedding behavior of these predicates poses puzzles for the compositional semantics of clausal complementation. In addition, the fact that some verbs “select for” a certain complement type poses further challenges for compositional semantics. This volume addresses these issues based on a uniformly question-oriented analysis of attitude predicates, and proposes to derive their variable behaviors from their lexical semantics. The book is essential reading for linguists working on the syntax and semantics of clausal complementation, as well as those interested in the role of lexical semantics in compositional semantics. It will also be valuable for philosophers who are interested in applying linguistic tools to address philosophical problems.

Download or read book English Verb Classes and Alternations written by Beth Levin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-09 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rich reference work, Beth Levin classifies over 3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and behavior. Levin starts with the hypothesis that a verb's meaning influences its syntactic behavior and develops it into a powerful tool for studying the English verb lexicon. She shows how identifying verbs with similar syntactic behavior provides an effective means of distinguishing semantically coherent verb classes, and isolates these classes by examining verb behavior with respect to a wide range of syntactic alternations that reflect verb meaning. The first part of the book sets out alternate ways in which verbs can express their arguments. The second presents classes of verbs that share a kernel of meaning and explores in detail the behavior of each class, drawing on the alternations in the first part. Levin's discussion of each class and alternation includes lists of relevant verbs, illustrative examples, comments on noteworthy properties, and bibliographic references. The result is an original, systematic picture of the organization of the verb inventory. Easy to use, English Verb Classes and Alternations sets the stage for further explorations of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax. It will prove indispensable for theoretical and computational linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, lexicographers, and teachers of English as a second language.

Download or read book Naive Semantics for Natural Language Understanding written by Kathleen Dahlgren and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces a theory, Naive Semantics (NS), a theory of the knowledge underlying natural language understanding. The basic assumption of NS is that knowing what a word means is not very different from knowing anything else, so that there is no difference in form of cognitive representation between lexical semantics and ency clopedic knowledge. NS represents word meanings as commonsense knowledge, and builds no special representation language (other than elements of first-order logic). The idea of teaching computers common sense knowledge originated with McCarthy and Hayes (1969), and has been extended by a number of researchers (Hobbs and Moore, 1985, Lenat et aI, 1986). Commonsense knowledge is a set of naive beliefs, at times vague and inaccurate, about the way the world is structured. Traditionally, word meanings have been viewed as criterial, as giving truth conditions for membership in the classes words name. The theory of NS, in identifying word meanings with commonsense knowledge, sees word meanings as typical descriptions of classes of objects, rather than as criterial descriptions. Therefore, reasoning with NS represen tations is probabilistic rather than monotonic. This book is divided into two parts. Part I elaborates the theory of Naive Semantics. Chapter 1 illustrates and justifies the theory. Chapter 2 details the representation of nouns in the theory, and Chapter 4 the verbs, originally published as "Commonsense Reasoning with Verbs" (McDowell and Dahlgren, 1987). Chapter 3 describes kind types, which are naive constraints on noun representations.

Download or read book Frames and Concept Types written by Thomas Gamerschlag and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume showcases the potential richness of frame representations. The presentation includes introductory articles on the application of frames to linguistics and philosophy of science, offering readers the tools to conduct the interdisciplinary investigation of concepts that frames allow. * Introductory articles on the application of frames to linguistics and philosophy of science * Frame analysis of changes in scientific concepts * Event frames and lexical decomposition * Properties, frame attributes and adjectives * Frames in concept composition * Nominal concept types and determination​ "This volume deals with frame representations and their relations to concept types in linguistics and philosophy of science. It aims at reviving concepts and frames as a common model across disciplines for representing semantic and conceptual knowledge. Departing from the general assumption that frames are not just an arbitrary format of representation but essential to human cognition, a number of case studies apply frames as an analytical tool to a wide range of phenomena, from changes in scientific concepts to particular linguistic phenomena. This provides new insights into long-standing semantic issues, such as the lexical representation of verbs (as predicative frames specifying particular event descriptions or situation types and their participants), adjectives and nominals (as concept frames, which provide attributes and properties of an entity), as well as modification, complementation, possessive constructions, compounding, nominal concept types, determination, or definiteness marking." Bert Gehrke, Pompeu, Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Download or read book The Fine grained Structure of the Lexical Area written by Antonio Fábregas and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book that presents a complete description and analysis of the Spanish suffixes that alter the grammatical behaviour of nouns and adjectives without changing their grammatical category, supporting a fine-grained decomposition of the syntactic area where these word classes are defined. In this monograph the reader will find a detailed empirical description of suffixes for gender, mereological properties of nouns, scalar properties of adjectives and a variety of nominal suffixes expressing actions, measures or locations, as well as an integral Neo-Constructionist analysis of the syntactic structure of the resulting formations. Framed within a Nanosyntactic-oriented framework, this book sheds light on the nature of lexical categories and the components of the low syntactic structure of nouns and adjectives. The book will be useful both to researchers in Spanish linguistics or theoretical morphology and to advanced students of Spanish interested in learning more about the expressive devices that nouns and adjectives allow.

Download or read book The Semantics of Prepositions written by Michel Aurnague & Laure Vieu and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1993 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The majority of the papers in this volume were presented at a workshop on the semantics of prepositions held at the Institut für Angewandte Informationsforschung in February 1990. The broader topic is the conceptualization of space. The papers bring together different approaches to the mental process of interpreting prepositions, in particular, the computational processing of prepositions as predications of different cognitive domains. While no one presentation can claim to be exhaustive, it is hoped that the insights contained will inspire future discussions within cognitive linguistics.

Download or read book Proceedings of the 9th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics written by Stanford Linguistics Association and published by Center for the Study of Language (CSLI). This book was released on 1991 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the papers presented at the 1990 West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics are included in this volume. This annual publication, not readily available in the past, makes the latest research in formal linguistics available to a wider audience. Aaron Halpern is a graduate student in linguistics at Stanford University.

Download or read book Confessions of a Lapsed Neo Davidsonian written by Samuel L. Bayer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1997. The purpose of this doctoral study was to address the properties of thematic roles in the context of an event semantics. With specific interest in whether it was possible to show that thematic roles were indispensable objects in compositional semantics, and what a syntax/semantics map which incorporated such objects might look like.

Download or read book Argument Structure in Usage Based Construction Grammar written by Florent Perek and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The argument structure of verbs, defined as the part of grammar that deals with how participants in verbal events are expressed in clauses, is a classical topic in linguistics that has received considerable attention in the literature. This book investigates argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective, taking the view that the cognitive representation of grammar is shaped by language use, and that crucial aspects of grammatical organization are tied to the frequency with which words and syntactic constructions are used. On the basis of several case studies combining quantitative corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments, it is shown how a usage-based approach sheds new light on a number of issues in argument realization and offers frequency-based explanations for its organizing principles at three levels of generality: verbs, constructions, and argument structure alternations.

Download or read book Noun modifying Constructions in Japanese written by Yoshiko Matsumoto and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the clausal noun-modifying construction (NMC) in Japanese, a much-discussed construction that embraces what have usually been called relative clause and noun complement constructions. Drawing upon a broad range of naturally-occurring NMCs, including types that fall outside the domains of relative clause and noun complement constructions, Yoshiko Matsumoto argues for an analysis of NMCs that gives an important role to semantics and pragmatics. The framework in which this approach is presented draws from, and further refines, concepts of frame semantics. By using a frame semantic definition of semantic integration, the author reveals the commonality of diverse types of NMCs in Japanese, and posits a tripartite classification of NMCs which is both more comprehensive and more revealing than the traditional dichotomy between relative clause and noun complement constructions. As the first comprehensive and systematic study in English of Japanese NMCs with diverse lexical heads, this work is further notable for its detailed discussion of the dependence of NMCs on both linguistic and extra-linguistic context.