Continuations and natural language / Chris Barker, Chung-chieh Shan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barker, Chris, 1961- author.

Shan, Chung-Chieh, author.

Series:

Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ; 53.

Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ; 53

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Natural language processing (Computer science).

Computational linguistics.

Physical Description:

xix, 228 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

This book takes concepts developed by researchers in theoretical computer science and adapts and applies them to the study of natural language meaning. Summarizing more than a decade of research, Chris Barker and Chung-chieh Shan put forward the Continuation Hypothesis: that the meaning of a natural language expression can depend on its own continuation. In Part I, the authors develop a continuation-based theory of scope and quantificational binding and provide an explanation for order sensitivity in scope-related phenomena such as scope ambiguity, crossover, superiority, reconstruction, negative polarity licensing, dynamic anaphora, and donkey anaphora. Part II outlines an innovative substructural logic for reasoning about continuations and proposes an analysis of the compositional semantics of adjectives such as 'same' in terms of parasitic and recursive scope. It also shows that certain cases of ellipsis should be treated as anaphora to a continuation, leading to a new explanation for a subtype of sluicing known as sprouting. The book makes a significant contribution to work on scope, reference, quantification, and other central aspects of semantics and will appeal to semanticists in linguistics and philosophy at graduate level and above. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Towers: Scope and Evaluation Order

1 Scope and towers 3

1.1 Scope 3

1.2 Syntactic categories: adjacency vs. containment 4

1.3 Tower notation 6

1.4 The combination schema 7

1.5 Types and continuations 9

1.6 The LIFT type-shifter 10

1.7 The LOWER type-shifter 11

1.8 A linear scope bias 13

1.9 A scope ambiguity due to LOWER 13

2 Binding and crossover 15

2.1 The irrelevance of c-command 17

2.2 The standard approach to crossover 18

2.3 A first crossover example 19

2.4 Strong crossover 20

2.5 Reversing the order of evaluation 20

2.6 Default evaluation order is left-to-right 22

3 From generalized quantifiers to dynamic meaning 24

3.1 Capturing the duality of DP meaning 24

3.2 Deriving context update functions 26

3.3 Comparison with Dynamic Montague Grammar 27

3.4 Unification of generalized quantifiers with dynamic semantics 29

4 Multi-level towers: Inverse scope 30

4.1 Accounting for scope ambiguity 30

4.2 Binding without indices: variable-free semantics 34

4.3 The role of LOWER in the explanation for crossover 35

5 Movement as delayed evaluation: Wh-fronting 38

5.1 Simple relative clauses: gaps 38

5.2 From in-situ wh to ex-situ wh: FRONT 40

5.3 Pied piping 42

5.4 Preview of delayed evaluation 44

5.5 Multiple wh-questions, and an account of superiority 44

6 Reconstruction effects 48

6.1 Reconstructing quantificational binding in a question 49

6.2 Despite reconstruction, crossover effects remain in force 52

6.3 Principle C effects are not expected 53

6.4 Reconstruction into relative clauses 54

6.5 Relative pronouns with pied piping 55

6.6 Idioms 56

6.7 Reflexives and each other anaphors 57

6.8 Conclusions concerning reconstruction 59

7 Generalized coordination, Flexible Montague Grammar 61

7.1 Generalized coordination as re-executing a continuation 61

7.2 Flexible Montague Grammar: implicit continuations 64

7.3 Argument Raising 64

7.4 Value Raising 66

7.5 So how flexible is Flexible Montague Grammar? 68

7.6 Adding binding to Flexible Montague Grammar 70

8 Order effects in negative polarity licensing 72

8.1 Negative polarity, order, and scope 73

8.2 An evaluation-order account 75

8.3 Other theories of order in NPI licensing 78

9 Donkey anaphora and donkey crossover 81

9.1 Donkey anaphora as in-scope binding 82

9.2 Why does every disrupt donkey anaphora? 86

9.3 Multiple indefinites: tracking bishops 86

9.4 Conjoined antecedents 89

9.5 Disjoined antecedents 91

9.6 Indefinites with universal force in the consequent 92

9.7 Donkey weak crossover 94

9.8 Conclusions 95

10 Strategies for determiners 97

10.1 Donkey anaphora from relative clauses 97

10.2 A derivation on which the indefinite scopes too low 99

10.3 A derivation on which the indefinite scopes too high 100

10.4 Explicitly managing side effects 101

10.5 Crossover for relative clause donkey anaphora 102

10.6 A scope-roofing constraint 102

10.7 A mystery concerning scope islands for universals 105

11 Other combinatory categorial frameworks 107

11.1 Jacobson's Variable-Free program 107

11.2 lacobson's lgz fragment 108

11.3 Steedman's scope as surface constituency 110

12 Computational connections 113

12.1 Order of evaluation in the lambda calculus 113

12.2 Notes on a computational implementation 117

Part II Logic: Same and Sluicing

13 NL_λ 125

13.1 Categories 125

13.2 Structures 126

13.3 Logical rules 126

13.4 Proofs as derivations 128

13.5 Structures with holes (contexts) 128

13.6 Curry-Howard labeling (semantic interpretation) 130

13.7 Quantifier scope ambiguity 131

14 Parasitic scope for same 133

14.1 Motivating a scope-taking analysis for same 134

14.2 Parasitic scope 135

14.3 Pervasive scope-taking 137

14.4 Same in the presence of partitives: recursive scope 138

14.5 Other accounts of same 139

15 Scope versus discontinuity: Anaphora, VPE 141

15.1 The tangram picture of parasitic scope 141

15.2 Discontinuous Lambek Grammar 142

15.3 Pronominal binding as parasitic scope 143

15.4 Verb phrase ellipsis as parasitic scope 145

15.5 Other parasitic scope analyses 146

16 Sluicing as anaphora to a continuation 147

16.1 Other approaches 147

16.2 Basic sluicing 148

16.3 Immediate good prediction: scope of inner antecedent 149

16.4 Case matching 150

16.5 Simple sprouting 151

16.6 Embedded sprouting: motivating silent modifiers 152

16.7 Sprouting in silence 153

16.8 Implicit argument sluices 155

16.9 A recursive scope analysis of Andrews Amalgams 157

16.10 Semantic restrictions on sluicing: the Answer Ban 159

17 Formal properties of NL_λ 162

17.1 Scope-taking in type-logical grammars 163

17.2 NLCL: An equivalent logic with standard postulates 164

17.3 Soundness and completeness 167

17.4 NLCL is conservative over NL 168

17.5 The connection between NL_λ and NL_CL 170

17.6 Embedding NL_λ into NL_CL 171

17.7 Embedding NL_CLCL into NL_λ 177

17.8 Cut elimination 179

17.9 Decidability 181

17.10 Proof search with gaps 185

17.11 Sluicing and unrestricted abstraction 186

18 Scope needs delimited continuations 188

18.1 The λμ-calculus applied to scope 190

18.2 The Lambek-Grishin calculus and scope 193

18.3 A continuation-based grammar for dynamic semantics 197

18.4 Monads 198.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199575015

0199575010

9780199575022

0199575029

OCLC:

904268163