Coping with uncertainty : noun phrase interpretation and early semantic analysis
A computer program which can ~understand~ natural language texts must have both syntactic knowledge about the language concerned and semantic knowledge of how what is written relates to its internal representation of the world. It has been a matter of some controversy how these sources of information can best be integrated to translate from an input text to a formal meaning representation. The controversy has concerned largely the question as to what degree of syntactic analysis must be performed before any semantic analysis can take place. An extreme position in this debate is that a syntactic parse tree for a complete sentence must be produced before any investigation of that sentence's meaning is appropriate. This position has been criticised by those who see understanding as a process that takes place gradually as the text is read, rather than in sudden bursts of activity at the ends of sentences. These people advocate a model where semantic analysis can operate on fragments of text before the global syntactic structure is determined - a strategy which we will call early semantic analysis. In this thesis, we investigate the implications of early semantic analysis in the interpretation of noun phrases.
Mellish, Christopher Stuart
Computational linguistics ; Natural language processing ; Semantics ; Data processing
Coping with uncertainty : noun phrase interpretation and early semantic analysis. A computer program which can ~understand~ natural language texts must have both syntactic knowledge about the language concerned and semantic knowledge of how what is written relates to its internal representation of the world. It has been a matter of some controversy how these sources of information can best be integrated to translate from an input text to a formal meaning representation. The controversy has concerned largely the question as to what degree of syntactic analysis must be performed before any semantic analysis can take place. An extreme position in this debate is that a syntactic parse tree for a complete sentence must be produced before any investigation of that sentence's meaning is appropriate. This position has been criticised by those who see understanding as a process that takes place gradually as the text is read, rather than in sudden bursts of activity at the ends of sentences. These people advocate a model where semantic analysis can operate on fragments of text before the global syntactic structure is determined - a strategy which we will call early semantic analysis. In this thesis, we investigate the implications of early semantic analysis in the interpretation of noun phrases.
uncertainty noun_phrase interpretation early semantic_analysis computer_program understand natural_language text must syntactic knowledge language concern semantic knowledge write relate internal_representation world matter controversy source_information best integrated translate input text formal meaning_representation controversy concern largely question degree syntactic_analysis must perform semantic_analysis take_place extreme position debate syntactic parse tree complete sentence must produce investigation sentence meaning appropriate position criticise see process take_place gradually text read rather sudden burst activity end sentence people advocate model semantic_analysis operate fragment text global syntactic_structure determine strategy call early semantic_analysis investigate implication early semantic_analysis interpretation noun_phrase