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<Paper uid="J81-3001">
  <Title>Roles, Co-Descriptors, and the Formal Representation of Quantified English Expressions</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
5. Conclusion: The Asymmetry of Roles
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Roles introduce a very interesting asymmetry. In my representation, the meaning of a node depends on its roles in more aggregate entities, not just on its constituents. For example, I use role-in links as Skolem modifiers where others have employed quantifier scope. In this way, I can represent quantificational dependencies a8 role-in links to nodes representing more aggregate entities. I have argued that roles are a natural device for explaining many linguistic and philosophical distinctions, and they are convenient for computational processing.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Section 3 showed how roles can help represent referring expressions. The referential/attributive dis146 American Journal of Computational Linguistics, Volume 7, Number 3, July-September 1981 William A. Martin Roles, Co-Descriptors, and the Formal Representation of Quantified English Expressions tinction was formulated in terms of roles so that the attributive use asserts something as a role in such-and-such whereas the referential use asserts something as being the such-and-such without a role dependency. I choose to use roles where others (e.g. Moore) have employed scope dependencies, because the ambiguity persists even when the scoping context is unavailable, as in &amp;quot;The president has owned a terrier since February&amp;quot;. In this way, I can delay the binding decision because I can represent the dependencies (or lack thereof) without hypothesizing an outer context.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Furthermore, I have argued that verb phrase deletion provides additional support for the claim that role dependencies are associated with references, not with contexts. That is, in a sentence like &amp;quot;The prosecutor believed that he would win the case, and so did the defense attorney&amp;quot;, there are two ways to interpret &amp;quot;he&amp;quot;: as a co-descriptor of the subject or as a co-descriptor of the prosecutor. Note that whichever way it is taken in the first conjunct, it will be taken the same way in the second. There is a natural explanation for this if the co-description dependency is associated with the reference &amp;quot;he&amp;quot;, whereas in a system where this dependency was associated with the context, an ad hoc stipulation would be required.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Section 4 argued that quantifier dependencies should be associated with references as opposed to contexts. My approach leads to a natural representation for collectives, distributives, and pluralities. By minimizing the differences in the representation of these three cases, an interpreter is in a better position to delay binding decisions. This is consistent with Van Lehn's empirical observations. Furthermore collectives and pluralities can be interpreted without iteration, saving considerable processing effort.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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