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PROBLEMS in LOGICAL FORM Robert C PROBLEMS IN LOGICAL FORM Robert C. Moore SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025 pieces of the logical form of the utterance that I INTRODUCTION constitute referring expressions. Having logical forms be semantically compositional is the ultimate expression of this kind of decomposability, as it renders ev,ery Decomposition of the problem of "language well-formed subexpression a locus of meanlng--and understanding" into manageable subproblems has always therefore a potential locus of meanlng-dependent posed a major challenge to the development theories of, processing. This is probably a more telling argument and systems for, natural-language processing. More or for semantic composltlonality in designing language- less distinct components are conventionally proposed for processing systems than in analyzing human language, but handling syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and inference. it can be reasonably argued that such design principles While disagreement exists as to what phenomena properly must be followed by any system, whether natural or belong in each area, and how much or what kinds of artificial, that has to adapt to a complex environment interaction there are among these components, there is (see [Simon, 1969], especially Chapter 4). I fairly widespread concurrence as to the overall Logical form, therefore, is proposed as a level of organization of linguistic processing. representation distinct from surface-syntactlc form, because there is apparently no direct way to Central to this approach is the idea that the semantically interpret natural language sentences in a processing of an utterance involves producing an compositional fashion. Some linguists and philosophers expression or structure that is in some sense a have challenged this assumption [Montague, 1974a] representation of the literal meaning of the utterance. [Barwlse and Cooper, 1981], but the complexity of their It is often maintained that understanding what an proposed systems and the limited range of syntactic utterance literally means consists in being able to forms they consider leave serlous doubt that the recover this representation. In philosophy and logical-form level can be completely bypassed. 2 linguistics this sort of representation is usually said to display the~ form of an utterance, so we will Beyond being co~positiouel, it is desirable--though refer (somewhat loosely-~-- to the representations perhaps not essential--that the meaning of a logical themselves as "logical forms," form also be independent of the context in which the associated utterance occurs. (The meaning of an This paper surveys what we at SRI view as some of expression in natural language, of course, is often the key problems encountered in defining a system of context-dependent.) A language-processing system must representation for the logical forms of English eventually produce a context-independent representation sentences, and suggests possible approaches to their of what the speaker means by an utterance because the solution. We will first look at some general issues content of the utterance will normally be subjected to related to the notion of logical form, and then discuss further processlnE after the original context has been a number of problems associated with the way information lost. In the many cases in which the speaker's intended involving certain key concepts is expressed in English. meaning is simply the literal meaning, a context- Although our main concern here is with theoretical independent logical form would give us the issues rather than with system performance, this paper representation we need. There is little doubt that some is not merely speculative. The DIALOGIC system representation of this sort is required. For example, currently under development in the SKI Artificial much of our general knowledge of the world is derived Intelligence Center parses English sentences and from simple assertions of fact in natural language, but translates them into logical forms embodying many of the our situation would be hopeless if, for every fact we ideas presented here. knew, we had to remember the context in which it was obtained before we could use it appropriately. Imagine trying to decide what to do with a tax refund by having to recall whether the topic of conversation was rivers or financial institutions the first time one heard that II THE NATURE OF LOGICAL FORM banks were good places in which to keep money. As this example suggests, context independence is The first question to ask is, why even have a level closely related to the resolution of ambiguity. For any of logical form? After all, sentences of natural given ambiguity, it is possible to find a case in which languages are themselves conveyers of meaning; that is the information needed tO resolve it is derived from the what natural languages are for. The reason for having context of an utterance. Therefore, if the meanlnEs of logical foznns is to present the literal meanings of logical forms are to be context-lndependent, the system sentences more perspicuously than do the sentences of logical forms must provide distinct, unambiguous themselves. It is sometimes said that natural-language representations for all possible readings of an sentences do not '~ear their meanings on their sleeves"; ambiguous utterance. The question remains whether logical forms are intended to do exactly that. logical form should also provide ambiguous representations to handle cases in which the From this perspective, the main desideratum for a dlsamblguatlng information is obtained later or is system of logical form is that its semantics be simply general world knowledge. The pros and cons of compositional. That is, the meaning of a complex such an approach are far from clear, so we will expression should depend only on the meaning of its generally assume only unembIEuous logical forms. subexpresslons. This is needed for meanlnE-dependent cou~utational processes to cope with logical forms of Although it is sometimes assumed that a context- arbitrary complexity. If there is to be any hope of independent representation of the literal meaning of a maintaining an intellectual grasp of what these sentence can be derived by using syntactic and semantic processes are doing, they must be decomposable into knowledge only, some pragmatic factors must also be smaller and smaller meanlng-dependent subprocesses taken into account. To take a concrete example, suppose operating on smaller and smaller meaningful pieces of a the request "Please llst the Nobel Prize winners in logical form. For instance, if identifying the entities physics," is followed by the question '~dho are the referred to by an utterance is a subprocess of inferring Americans?" The phrase "the Americans" in the second the speaker's intentions, there must be identifiable utterance should almost certainly be interpreted as 117 referring to American winners of the Nobel Prize in In summary, the notion of logical form we wish to physics, rather than all inhabitants or citizens of the capture is essentially that of a representation of the United States, as It might be understood in isolation. "literal meaning in context" of an utterance. To If the logical form of the utterance is to reflect the facilitate further processing, it is virtually essential intended interpretation, processes that are normally that the meaning of Ioglcal-form expressions be assigned to praSmatlcs must be used to derive it. compositional and, at the same time, it is highly desirable that they be conCext-lndependenc. The latter One could attempt to avoid thls consequence by condition requires that a system of logical form furnish representing "the Americans" at the level of logical distinct representations for the dlfferenc readings of form as literally meaning all Americans, and have later ambiguous natural-language expressions. It also pragmatic processing restrict the interpretation co requires chat some limited amount of prag~atlc American winners of the Nobel Prize in physics. There processing be involved in producing those are other cases, however, for which thls sort of move is representations. Finally, we note that not all not available. Consider more carefully the adjective pragmatic factors in the use of language can be "American." American people could be either inhabitants reflected in the logical form of an utterance, because or citizens of the United States; American cars could be some of those factors are dependent on information that either manufactured or driven in the United States; the logical form itself provides. American food could be food produced or consumed in or prepared in a style indigenous Co the United States. In short, the meaning of "American" seems to be no more than "bearing some contextually determined relation to the United States." Thus, there is n~o deflnlte context- III FORM AND CONTENT IN KNOWLEDGE P.EP&ESENTJtTION independent mesnlng for sentences containing modifiers llke "American." The same is true for many uses of "have," "of," possessives, locative prepositions Developing a theory of the loglcal form of English [Herskovits, 1980] and compound nominals. The only way sentences is as much an exercise in knowledge to hold fast to the position that the construction of representation as in linguistics, but ic differs from loglcal-form precedes all pragmatic processing seems to most work in arclficlal intelligence on knowledge be to put in "dummy'* symbols for the unknown relations: representation in one key respect. Knowledge This m@y in fact be very useful in building an actual representation schemes are usually intended by their system, ~ but It is hard to imagine that such a level of designers to be as general as possible and to avoid representation would bear much theoretical weight. com~aitment to any particular concepts. The essential problem for a theory of logical form, however, is co We will chum assume that a theoretically represent specific concepts chat natural languages have interesting level of logical form will have resolved special features for expressing information about. contextually dependent definite references, as well as Concepts that fall in chls category include: the ocher "local" pragmatic lndeterminacies mentioned.
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