A Compositional Account of Dependency Grammar
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Lexical and Syntactic Ambiguity As a Source of Humor: the Case of Newspaper Headlines
Lexical and syntactic ambiguity as a source of humor: The case of newspaper headlines CHIARA BUCARIA Abstract The paper analyzes some forms of linguistic ambiguity in English in a specific register, i.e. newspaper headlines. In particular, the focus of the research is on examples of lexical and syntactic ambiguity that result in sources of voluntary or involuntary humor. The study is based on a corpus of 135 verbally ambiguous headlines found on web sites presenting humor- ous bits of information. The linguistic phenomena that contribute to create this kind of semantic confusion in headlines will be analyzed and divided into the three main categories of lexical, syntactic, and phonological ambi- guity, and examples from the corpus will be discussed for each category. The main results of the study were that, firstly, contrary to the findings of previous research on jokes, syntactically ambiguous headlines were found in good percentage in the corpus and that this might point to di¤erences in genre. Secondly, two new configurations for the processing of the disjunctor/connector order were found. In the first of these configurations the disjunctor appears before the connector, instead of being placed after or coinciding with the ambiguous element, while in the second one two ambig- uous elements are present, each of which functions both as a connector and a disjunctor. Keywords: Ambiguity; headlines; lexical; syntactic; disjunctor; connector. Introduction The present paper sets out to analyze some forms of linguistic ambiguity in English in a specific register, i.e. newspaper headlines. In particular, the Humor 17–3 (2004), 279–309 0933–1719/04/0017–0279 6 Walter de Gruyter 280 C. -
The Meaning of Language
01:615:201 Introduction to Linguistic Theory Adam Szczegielniak The Meaning of Language Copyright in part: Cengage learning The Meaning of Language • When you know a language you know: • When a word is meaningful or meaningless, when a word has two meanings, when two words have the same meaning, and what words refer to (in the real world or imagination) • When a sentence is meaningful or meaningless, when a sentence has two meanings, when two sentences have the same meaning, and whether a sentence is true or false (the truth conditions of the sentence) • Semantics is the study of the meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences – Lexical semantics: the meaning of words and the relationships among words – Phrasal or sentential semantics: the meaning of syntactic units larger than one word Truth • Compositional semantics: formulating semantic rules that build the meaning of a sentence based on the meaning of the words and how they combine – Also known as truth-conditional semantics because the speaker’ s knowledge of truth conditions is central Truth • If you know the meaning of a sentence, you can determine under what conditions it is true or false – You don’ t need to know whether or not a sentence is true or false to understand it, so knowing the meaning of a sentence means knowing under what circumstances it would be true or false • Most sentences are true or false depending on the situation – But some sentences are always true (tautologies) – And some are always false (contradictions) Entailment and Related Notions • Entailment: one sentence entails another if whenever the first sentence is true the second one must be true also Jack swims beautifully. -
Conditionals in Political Texts
JOSIP JURAJ STROSSMAYER UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Adnan Bujak Conditionals in political texts A corpus-based study Doctoral dissertation Advisor: Dr. Mario Brdar Osijek, 2014 CONTENTS Abstract ...........................................................................................................................3 List of tables ....................................................................................................................4 List of figures ..................................................................................................................5 List of charts....................................................................................................................6 Abbreviations, Symbols and Font Styles ..........................................................................7 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................9 1.1. The subject matter .........................................................................................9 1.2. Dissertation structure .....................................................................................10 1.3. Rationale .......................................................................................................11 1.4. Research questions ........................................................................................12 2. Theoretical framework .................................................................................................13 -
Automated Detection of Syntactic Ambiguity Using Shallow Parsing and Web Data by Reza Khezri [email protected]
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, LINGUISTICS AND THEORY OF SCIENCE Automated Detection of Syntactic Ambiguity Using Shallow Parsing and Web Data By Reza Khezri [email protected] Master’s Thesis, 30 credits Master’s Programme in Language Technology Autumn, 2017 Supervisor: Prof. Staffan Larsson Keywords: ambiguity, ambiguity detection tool, ambiguity resolution, syntactic ambiguity, Shallow Parsing, Google search API, PythonAnywhere, PP attachment ambiguity Abstract: Technical documents are mostly written in natural languages and they are highly ambiguity-prone due to the fact that ambiguity is an inevitable feature of natural languages. Many researchers have urged technical documents to be free from ambiguity to avoid unwanted and, in some cases, disastrous consequences ambiguity and misunderstanding can have in technical context. Therefore the need for ambiguity detection tools to assist writers with ambiguity detection and resolution seems indispensable. The purpose of this thesis work is to propose an automated approach in detection and resolution of syntactic ambiguity. AmbiGO is the name of the prototyping web application that has been developed for this thesis which is freely available on the web. The hope is that a developed version of AmbiGO will assist users with ambiguity detection and resolution. Currently AmbiGO is capable of detecting and resolving three types of syntactic ambiguity, namely analytical, coordination and PP attachment types. AmbiGO uses syntactic parsing to detect ambiguity patterns and retrieves frequency counts from Google for each possible reading as a segregate for semantic analysis. Such semantic analysis through Google frequency counts has significantly improved the precision score of the tool’s output in all three ambiguity detection functions. -
Studies in Linguistics
STiL Studies in Linguistics Proceedings XXXV Incontro di Grammatica Generativa Vol 3. 2009 CISCL CENTRO INTERDIPARTIMENTALE DI STUDI COGNITIVI SUL LINGUAGGIO Interdepartmental Centre for Cognitive Studies on Language Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA Studies In Linguistics Vol3, 2009 2 STiL Studies in Linguistics Edited by: Vincenzo Moscati Emilio Servidio Correspondence can be addressed to: CISCL – Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Cognitivi sul Linguaggio Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione Complesso S. Niccolò, Via Roma, 56 I-53100 Siena, Italy or by email at: moscati unisi.it 3 Contents Maria Teresa Guasti, Chiara Branchini, Fabrizio Arosio Agreement in the production of Italian subject and object wh-questions 6 Liliane Haegeman The syntax of conditional clauses 28 Maria Rita Manzini & Leonardo Savoia Mesoclisis in the Imperative: Phonology, Morphology or Syntax? 51 Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg & Ian Roberts Linearization and the Architecture of Grammar: A view from the Final-over- Final Constraint 77 Gloria Cocchi Bantu verbal extensions: a cartographic approach 90 Federica Cognola TopicPs and Relativised Minimality in Mòcheno left periphery 104 Silvio Cruschina & Eva-Maria Remberger Focus Fronting in Sardinian and Sicilian 118 Maria Teresa Espinal & Jaume Mateu On bare nominals and argument structure 131 Irene Franco Stylistic Fronting: a comparative analysis 144 Hanako Fujino The Adnominal Form in Japanese as a Relativization Strategy 158 Ion Giurgea Romanian null objects and gender -
Lightweight Monadic Programming in ML
Lightweight Monadic Programming in ML Nikhil Swamy? Nataliya Gutsy Daan Leijen? Michael Hicksy ?Microsoft Research, Redmond yUniversity of Maryland, College Park Abstract ing [26]. In a monadic type system, if values are given type τ then Many useful programming constructions can be expressed as mon- computations are given type m τ for some monad constructor m. ads. Examples include probabilistic modeling, functional reactive For example, an expression of type IO τ in Haskell represents programming, parsing, and information flow tracking, not to men- a computation that will produce (if it terminates) a value of type tion effectful functionality like state and I/O. In this paper, we τ but may perform effectful operations in the process. Haskell’s present a type-based rewriting algorithm to make programming Monad type class, which requires the bind and unit operations with arbitrary monads as easy as using ML’s built-in support for given above, is blessed with special syntax, the do notation, for state and I/O. Developers write programs using monadic values programming with instances of this class. of type m τ as if they were of type τ, and our algorithm inserts Moggi [22], Filinksi [11], and others have noted that ML pro- the necessary binds, units, and monad-to-monad morphisms so that grams, which are impure and observe a deterministic, call-by-value evaluation order, are inherently monadic. For example, the value the program type checks. Our algorithm, based on Jones’ qualified 0 types, produces principal types. But principal types are sometimes λx.e can be viewed as having type τ ! m τ : the argument problematic: the program’s semantics could depend on the choice type τ is never monadic because x is always bound to a value in of instantiation when more than one instantiation is valid. -
An Approach for Detecting Syntax and Syntactic Ambiguity in Software Requirement Specification
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology 30th April 2018. Vol.96. No 8 © 2005 – ongoing JATIT & LLS ISSN: 1992-8645 www.jatit.org E-ISSN: 1817-3195 AN APPROACH FOR DETECTING SYNTAX AND SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY IN SOFTWARE REQUIREMENT SPECIFICATION 1 ALI OLOW JIM’ALE SABRIYE, 2*WAN MOHD NAZMEE WAN ZAINON 1Faculty of Computing, SIMAD University, Mogadishu, Somalia 2School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT Software requirements are considered to be ambiguous if the requirements statement could have more than one interpretation. The ambiguous requirements could cause the software developers to develop software which is different from what the customer needs. The focus of this paper is to propose an approach to detect syntax and syntactic ambiguity in software requirements specification. In this paper, Parts of speech (POS) tagging technique has been used to detect these ambiguities. A prototype tool has been developed in order to evaluate the proposed approach. The evaluation is done by comparing the detection capabilities of the proposed tool against human capabilities. The overall results show that the humans do have some difficulties in detecting ambiguity in software requirements, especially the syntactic ambiguity and software requirements that contains both syntax and syntactic ambiguity in one sentence. The proposed tool can definitely help the analyst in detecting ambiguity in Software requirements. Keywords: Part of speech tagging, Syntax ambiguity, Syntactic ambiguity, Software requirements specification. 1. INTRODUCTION can negatively affect in all the software development process [7]. Software requirement specification (SRS) document is an important document with a full Ambiguity in SRS can cause some big issues that description about functional and non-functional can affect the software development process because requirements of a software sys-tem to be developed different interpretations can turn into bugs (such as [1]. -
Natural Language Semantics
Logical Approaches to (Compositional) Natural Language Semantics Kristina Liefke, MCMP Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students LMU Munich, July 28, 2014 This Session & The Summer School Many lectures/tutorials have presupposed the possibility of translating natural language sentences into interpretable logical formulas. But: This translation procedure has not been made explicit. 1 In this session, we introduce a procedure for the translation of natural language, which is inspired by the work of Montague: Kristina talks about Montague. Kristina k Montague m talk talk about about Kristina talks about Montague about (m, talk, k) 2 We will then use this procedure to provide a (formal) semantics for natural language. Montague Grammar The (Rough) Plan nat. lang. logical model-th. sentences formulas objects translation interpret’n K. talks talk (k) T À Compositional Semantics We will be concerned with compositional – not lexical – semantics: Lexical semantics studies the meaning of individual words: talk := “to convey or express ideas, thought, information etc. by means of speech” J K Compositional semantics studies the way in which complex phrases obtain a meaning from their constituents: Kristina = k Montague = m talk = talk about = about Kristina talks about Montague = about (m, talk, k) J K J K J K J K J K J K J K J K PrincipleJ (Semantic compositionality)K J K (Partee, 1984) The meaning of an expression is a function of the meanings of its constituents and their mode of combination. Compositional Semantics We will be concerned with compositional – not lexical – semantics: Lexical semantics studies the meaning of individual words. Compositional semantics studies the way in which complex phrases obtain a meaning from their constituents: Montague: Kristina = k0 Montague = m0 talk = talk0 about = about0 Kristina talks about Montague = about0(m0, talk0, k0) J K J K J K J K J K J K J K J K J ‘Word-prime semantics’ (CrouchK J and King, 2008),K cf. -
EVIDENTIALS and RELEVANCE by Ely Ifantidou
EVIDENTIALS AND RELEVANCE by Ely Ifantidou Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London 1994 Department of Phonetics and Linguistics University College London (LONDON ABSTRACT Evidentials are expressions used to indicate the source of evidence and strength of speaker commitment to information conveyed. They include sentence adverbials such as 'obviously', parenthetical constructions such as 'I think', and hearsay expressions such as 'allegedly'. This thesis argues against the speech-act and Gricean accounts of evidentials and defends a Relevance-theoretic account Chapter 1 surveys general linguistic work on evidentials, with particular reference to their semantic and pragmatic status, and raises the following issues: for linguistically encoded evidentials, are they truth-conditional or non-truth-conditional, and do they contribute to explicit or implicit communication? For pragmatically inferred evidentials, is there a pragmatic framework in which they can be adequately accounted for? Chapters 2-4 survey the three main semantic/pragmatic frameworks for the study of evidentials. Chapter 2 argues that speech-act theory fails to give an adequate account of pragmatic inference processes. Chapter 3 argues that while Grice's theory of meaning and communication addresses all the central issues raised in the first chapter, evidentials fall outside Grice's basic categories of meaning and communication. Chapter 4 outlines the assumptions of Relevance Theory that bear on the study of evidentials. I sketch an account of pragmatically inferred evidentials, and introduce three central distinctions: between explicit and implicit communication, truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional meaning, and conceptual and procedural meaning. These distinctions are applied to a variety of linguistically encoded evidentials in chapters 5-7. -
Introduction to Montague Semantics Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy
INTRODUCTION TO MONTAGUE SEMANTICS STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY formerly Synthese Language Library Managing Editors: GENNORO CHIERCHIA, Cornwell University PAULINE JACOBSON, Brown University Editorial Board: EMMON BACH, University of Massachusetts at Amherst JON BARWISE, CSLI, Stanford JOHAN VAN BENTHEM, Mathematics Institute, University of Amsterdam DAVID DOWTY, Ohio State University, Columbus GERALD GAZDAR, University of Sussex, Brighton EWAN KLEIN, University of Edinburgh BILL LADUSA W, University of California at Santa Cruz SCOTT SOAMES, Princeton University HENRY THOMPSON, University of Edinburgh VOLUM E 11 INTRODUCTION TO MONTAGUE SEMANTICS by DA VID R. DOWTY Dept. of Linguistics, Ohio State University, Columbus ROBERT E. WALL Dept. of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin and STANLEY PETERS CSLI, Stanford KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Dowty, David R. Introduction to Montague semantics. (Syn these language library; v. 11) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Montague grammar. 2. Semantics(philosophy). 3. Generative grammar. 4. Formal languages-Semantics. I. Wall, Robert Eugene, joint author. II. Peters, Stanley, 1941- joint author. III. Title. IV. Series P158.5D6 415 80-20267 ISBN-13: 978-90-277-1142-7 e-ISBN-13978-94-009-9065-4 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-9065-4 Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. -
European Journal of Educational Research Volume 9, Issue 1, 395- 411
Research Article doi: 10.12973/eu-jer.9.1.395 European Journal of Educational Research Volume 9, Issue 1, 395- 411. ISSN: 2165-8714 http://www.eu-jer.com/ ‘Sentence Crimes’: Blurring the Boundaries between the Sentence-Level Accuracies and their Meanings Conveyed Yohannes Telaumbanua* Nurmalina Yalmiadi Masrul Politeknik Negeri Padang, Universitas Pahlawan Tuanku Universitas Dharma Andalas Universitas Pahlawan Tuanku INDONESIA Tambusai Pekanbaru Riau Padang, INDONESIA Tambusai, INDONESIA Indonesia, INDONESIA Received: September 9, 2019▪ Revised: October 29, 2019 ▪ Accepted: January 15, 2020 Abstract: The syntactic complexities of English sentence structures induced the Indonesian students’ sentence-level accuracies blurred. Reciprocally, the meanings conveyed are left hanging. The readers are increasingly at sixes and sevens. The Sentence Crimes were, therefore, the major essences of diagnosing the students’ sentence-level inaccuracies in this study. This study aimed at diagnosing the 2nd-year PNP ED students’ SCs as the writers of English Paragraph Writing at the Writing II course. Qualitatively, both observation and documentation were the instruments of collecting the data while the 1984 Miles & Huberman’s Model and the 1973 Corder’s Clinical Elicitation were employed to analyse the data as regards the SCs produced by the students. The findings designated that the major sources of the students’ SCs were the subordinating/dependent clauses (noun, adverb, and relative clauses), that-clauses, participle phrases, infinitive phrases, lonely verb phrases, an afterthought, appositive fragments, fused sentences, and comma splices. As a result, the SCs/fragments flopped to communicate complete thoughts because they were grammatically incorrect; lacked a subject, a verb; the independent clauses ran together without properly using punctuation marks, conjunctions or transitions; and two or more independent clauses were purely joined by commas but failed to consider using conjunctions. -
Montague Grammar Stefan Thater Blockseminar “Underspecification” 10.04.2006 Overview
Montague Grammar Stefan Thater Blockseminar “Underspecification” 10.04.2006 Overview • Introduction • Type Theory • A Montague-Style Grammar • Scope Ambiguities • Summary Introduction • The basic assumption underlying Montague Grammar is that the meaning of a sentence is given by its truth conditions. - “Peter reads a book” is true iff Peter reads a book • Truth conditions can be represented by logical formulae - “Peter reads a book” → ∃x(book(x) ∧ read(p*, x)) • Indirect interpretation: - natural language → logic → models Compositionality • An important principle underlying Montague Grammar is the so called “principle of compositionality” The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts, and the syntactic rules by which they are combined (Partee & al, 1993) Compositionality John reads a book John reads a book [[ John reads a book ]] = reads a book C1([[ John]], [[reads a book]] ) = C1([[ John]], C2([[reads]] , [[a book]] ) = a book C1([[ John]], C2([[reads]] , C3([[a]], [[book]])) Representing Meaning • First order logic is in general not an adequate formalism to model the meaning of natural language expressions. • Expressiveness - “John is an intelligent student” ⇒ intelligent(j*) ∧ stud(j*) - “John is a good student” ⇒ good(j*) ∧ stud(j*) ?? - “John is a former student” ⇒ former(j*) ∧ stud(j*) ??? • Representations of noun phrases, verb phrases, … - “is intelligent” ⇒ intelligent( ∙ ) ? - “every student” ⇒ ∀x(student(x) ⇒ ⋅ ) ??? Type Theory • First order logic provides only n-ary first order relations, which