Semantic interpretation and ambiguity. Hirst, G. Artificial intelligence, 34(2):131–177, March, 1988.
abstract   bibtex   

A new approach to semantic interpretation in natural language understanding is described, together with mechanisms for both lexical and structural disambiguation that work in concert with the semantic interpreter.

ABSITY, the system described, is a Montague-inspired semantic interpreter. Like Montague formalisms, its semantics is compositional by design and is strongly typed, with semantic rules in one-to-one correspondence with the meaning-affecting rules of a Marcus parser. The Montague semantic objects—functors and truth conditions—are replaced with elements of the frame language FRAIL. ABSITY's partial results are always well-formed FRAIL objects.

A semantic interpreter must be able to provide feedback to the parser to help it handle structural ambiguities. In ABSITY, this is done by the ``Semantic Enquiry Desk,'' a process that answers the parser's questions on semantic preferences. Disambiguation of word senses and of case slots is done by a set of procedures, one per word or slot, each of which determines the word or slot's correct sense, in cooperation with the other processes.

It is from the fact that partial results are always well-formed semantic objects that the system gains much of its power. This, in turn, comes from the strict correspondence between syntax and semantics in ABSITY. The result is a foundation for semantic interpretation superior to previous approaches.

@Article{	  hirst31,
  author	= {Graeme Hirst},
  title		= {Semantic interpretation and ambiguity},
  journal	= {Artificial intelligence},
  volume	= {34},
  number	= {2},
  month		= {March},
  year		= {1988},
  pages		= {131--177},
  abstract	= {<p>A new approach to semantic interpretation in natural
		  language understanding is described, together with
		  mechanisms for both lexical and structural disambiguation
		  that work in concert with the semantic interpreter. </p><p>
		  <small>ABSITY</small>, the system described, is a
		  Montague-inspired semantic interpreter. Like Montague
		  formalisms, its semantics is compositional by design and is
		  strongly typed, with semantic rules in one-to-one
		  correspondence with the meaning-affecting rules of a Marcus
		  parser. The Montague semantic objects---functors and truth
		  conditions---are replaced with elements of the frame
		  language <small>FRAIL</small>. <small>ABSITY</small>'s
		  partial results are always well-formed <small>FRAIL</small>
		  objects. </p><p> A semantic interpreter must be able to
		  provide feedback to the parser to help it handle structural
		  ambiguities. In <small>ABSITY</small>, this is done by the
		  ``Semantic Enquiry Desk,'' a process that answers the
		  parser's questions on semantic preferences. Disambiguation
		  of word senses and of case slots is done by a set of
		  procedures, one per word or slot, each of which determines
		  the word or slot's correct sense, in cooperation with the
		  other processes. </p><p> It is from the fact that partial
		  results are always well-formed semantic objects that the
		  system gains much of its power. This, in turn, comes from
		  the strict correspondence between syntax and semantics in
		  <small>ABSITY</small>. The result is a foundation for
		  semantic interpretation superior to previous
		  approaches.</p>},
  download	= {http://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/gh/Hirst-semInt-88.pdf}
}

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