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<Paper uid="C82-1015">
  <Title>f I I I I I /-- I I i I I I CHILD ER OLD THAN l$ HP f DETP</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="95" end_page="95" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
TRANSLATORS
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Followlng the syntactic analysis of an utterance, a sequence of semantic translators is invoked to -build the loglcal form that corresponds to a llteral interpretation of the utterance in context. The translator for each phrase-structure rule specifies how the various constituents of the phrase are to be combined to form an interpretation of the wbol~ phrase. It prescribes the predicate-argument structures that correspond to the grammatical construction or, more generally, the operator-operand structures.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> D1ALOGIc, A CORE-NATURAL-LANGUAGE PROCESSING SYSTEM 97 Although the translators operate top-down (the translator for each node inyokes the translators for its children), the translation is in effect built bottom-up-since, typically, the first thing a translator for a nonterminal node does is to invoke the translators for each of its constituents, usually left to right.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> However, the top-down nature of the translation process is significant, because it means that information located above a node and to its left is available when the node is translated. In addition to producing the logical form, the translators determine the syntactic constraints upon and preferences for either coreference or noncoreference of noun phrases, especially pronouns, following an algorithm described in \[Hobbs, 1976\].</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="95" end_page="95" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
BASIC SEMANTIC FUNCTIONS
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> To insulate changes in the grammar from those that occur in logical form, the construction of the latter is isolated from the translator procedures by calls on basic semantic functions \[Konollge, 1979\]). The actual construction of a logical form is done in two phases: (I) ioglcal-form fragments (iffs) are attached to the parse tree by the basic semantic functions; (2) the final logical form is assembled from these by the scoplng algorithm.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Lffs are assigned only to certain&amp;quot; nodes in the parse tree. Usually the iff at an NP node will encode the properties held by the entity the NP describes \[e.g., &amp;quot;X such that EMPLOYEE(X) &amp; OLD(X)&amp;quot; for &amp;quot;old employee&amp;quot;\] and the fragment for a clause-level construction (e.g., a VP) will encode the predlcate-argument structure of the clause, The basic semantic functions also leave markers on the parse tree to indicate such things as the type of quantifier or deter~iner associated with a noun phrase.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> These markers are used by the scoplng algorithm to determine the final loglcal form for the utterance. (Note that the Iffs and markers left by the basic semantic functions may be viewed as further annotations to the parse tree.) DIALOGIC currently includes eleven basic semantic functions. Six of these do most of the work of buildlng lffs for standard noun phrases and clauses. The others are concerned with adding such things as mode, degree, and adverbial modification to clauses. As more precise specifications are defined for encoding these phenomena in logical form, we expect to collapse some of this latter group.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="95" end_page="95" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
SCOPING OF QUANTIFIERS AND OTHER SENTENTIAL OPERATORS
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The scoplng algorithm is designed to collect the loglcal-form fragments from the parse tree and produce the possible scoplngs of quantlflers and other scoped operators. The scoplng algorithm used in DIALOGIC (adapted from that in Hendrlx, 1978) produces all the scoplngs thnt do not vlolate the hard rules of Engllsh scoplng, and then ranks them according to a score computed by a set of speciallst critics. Each critic is a function that returns a score for some aspect of the conflicting rules of quantification in Engllsh; e.g., the left-rlght scope critic lowers the score of 8coplngs that involve permuting the leftoutermost default ordering of quantlflers. All critics receive equal weight in the present implementation, but the design of the system does allow for differential weighting.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The current set of critics is concerned with such things as changes in sentence order and the relatlve scoplng of quantlflers of different strengths. The scoplng of nonstandard quantlflers and of the generallzed negative (&amp;quot;not, .... no one,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;nothing, .... none&amp;quot;) remain to be done.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="95" end_page="95" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
BASIC PRAGMATIC FUNCTIONS
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Basic pragmatic functions are intended to fulfill several roles in DIALOGIC, all concerned with certain kinds of indetermlnacles in logical form whose resolution requires pragmatic information. The four primary uses of basic pragmatic 98 B. GROSZ et -1.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> functions in the current system are (i) ~o provide a context-speclflc interpretation of certain terms that have only vague meanings in themselves (e.g., prepositions llke &amp;quot;of&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;~n~&amp;quot; or Inherently vague verbs llke &amp;quot;have&amp;quot;); (2) to establlsh the specific relationship underlying any given noun-noun combination; (3) to identify the referents of pronouns; and (4) to interpret a limited range of metonymy (e.g., the use of &amp;quot;blonds&amp;quot; to mean &amp;quot;people with blond hair&amp;quot;). At present, only a small core of pragmatic functions is implemented, each of which handles only a subset of the cases it is intended to cover.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="8" start_page="95" end_page="95" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
EXAMPLE
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> To illustrate how the different modules' of DIALOGIC contribute to the interpretation of an utterance, we shall consider the example, &amp;quot;What SRI employees have children older than 15 years?&amp;quot; The logical form for this query--the target for the interpretation processes--Is (lowercase is used to indicate variables, uppercase to indicate constants and predicates):  This corresponds rou@hly to a formal representation for &amp;quot;who is each employee such that the company of the ~nployee is SRI and some child of the employee is older than fifteen years?&amp;quot; During DIAMOND'S parsing phase, the parse tree in Figure I is constructed. At this polnt~ the attributes annotating the tree encode such properties as the type of noun (count, mass~ unit) and syntactic number. These attrlbutes have been used during the parsing phase to rule out certain alternative structures. Once this structure is built, the translators are invoked. In combination with the basic semantic functions, the translators assign addltlonal attributes to nodes in the tree, encoding such information as the quantlflers (type~ strength, and the variables they bind) and heads of noun phrases. For example~ the head of the WHNP, &amp;quot;what SRI employees&amp;quot;m is a variable of type EMPLOYEE that 14 bound by a wiT-type quantifier. Attributes also encode the underlying predlcate-argument structures for verb phrases and adJectlves~ and the iffs to be used in constructing the flnal logical form for the utterance.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In the sentence of Figure I, the nodes WHNP and S are annotated as being quantlfledp WHNP with a wh-type quantifier and S as a &amp;quot;query.&amp;quot; Although every rule has an associated translator, only some of these result in iffs being attached to nodes. For this example~ the nodes marked with *e in the original parse tree are the only ones for which Iffs are produced.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The fragment attached to each of these nodes is as follows:  EMPLOYEE, CHILD, and OLD are&amp;quot; monadlc predicates that are part of the conceptual model of the domain. *MORE e maps a predicate into a comparative along the scale corresponding to the predicate. *NN* and *HAVE are dummy predicates that indicate the need tO invoke the basic pragmatic functions.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> After the translation process is complete, the final loglcal form is asseLbled by a procedure that considers alteruatlve quantifier scoplngs (using the quantifier- null related annotations left on the parse tree) and invokes the basic pragmatic functions as needed. The basic pragmatic functions use information in the conceptual model of the domain to transform (*HN* employeel SRI)--corresponding to the noun-noun compound &amp;quot;SRI employee&amp;quot;--into (EMPLOYEE-OF employeel SRI) and (*HAVE employeel child2) into (CHILD-OF employeel child2).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> The nodes with either quantifier or ioglcal-form markings are the only ones considered by the TEAM scoplng algorithm. Besides the WH quantifying employee1, TEAM recognizes that a default existential quantifier must be created for child2~ so SOME is added. The scope rules force QUERY to have the widest scope; this position 18 contested only if there are multiple sententlal markers. Both orderlngs of the WHAT and SOME quantlflers are generated. The two resultlng quantified statements correspon d to (WHAT employeel (SOME child ...)...) and (SOHE child (WHAT employee ...)...) Next the scope critic functions evaluate the different scoplngs; only three of the critics are relevant. One critic considers the left-right node ordering and prefers the first scoplng because it comes closer to the surface form, One critic prefers scoplngs in which WH outecopes an adjacent exlstential; it too upgrades the score of the first and downgrades the score of the second. The other critic knows that default existential quantlflers need the narrowest possible scope; it too selects the first.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> 100 B. GROSZ et al.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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