Computational Linguistics and Formal Semantics

by Michael Rosner, Roderick Johnson

Overview

This collection takes the exciting step of examining natural language phenomena from the perspectives of both computational linguistics and formal semantics. Computational linguistics has until now been primarily concerned with the construction of computational models for handling the complexities of linguistic form, but has not tackled the questions of representing or computing meaning. Formal semantics, on the other hand, has attempted to account for the relations between forms and meanings, without necessarily attending to computational concerns. Computational Linguistics and Formal Semantics introduces the reader to the two disciplines and considers the prospects for the more unified and comprehensive computational theory of language that might obtain from their amalgamation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521419598
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/30/1992
Series:	Studies in Natural Language Processing
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

1. Unification; 2. Representations and interpretations; 3. Syntactic categories and semantic type; 4. Fine-structure in categorical semantics; 5. Properties, propositions and semantic theory; 6. Algorithms for semantic interpretation; 7. Situation schemata and linguistic representation; 8. Application-oriented computational semantics; 9. Form and content in semantics; Epilogue: on the relation between computational linguistics and formal semantics; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"...makes important theoretical progress in the formalism of natural language processing. The accent is on the relations between the syntax and the semantics of natural language. Also, the commonalities of natural language and artificial intelligence are stressed....readers will find the state of the art in the theory of natural language processing and some important new contributions." Claudiu Popescu, Computing Reviews

"This is a collection of excellent papers....The overall high quality of the contributions should make it valuable to all computational linguists interested in semantics." John Nerbonne, Computational Linguistics

From the Publisher