Abstract
In this paper, an application of automated theorem proving techniques to computational semantics is considered. In order to compute the presuppositions of a natural language discourse, several inference tasks arise. Instead of treating these inferences independently of each other, we show how integrating techniques from formal approaches to context into deduction can help to compute presuppositions more efficiently. Contexts are represented as Discourse Representation Structures and the way they are nested is made explicit. In addition, a tableau calculus is present which keeps track of contextual information, and thereby allows to avoid carrying out redundant inference steps as it happens in approaches that neglect explicit nesting of contexts.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
G. Attardi and M. Simi. Building proofs in context. In Proceedings of Meta’ 94, LNCS 883, pages 410–424. Springer, 1994.
G. Attardi and M. Simi. Proofs in context. In J. Doyle and P. Torasso, editors, Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference. Morgan Kaufmann, 1994.
P. Blackburn, J. Bos, M. Kohlhase, and H. de Nivelle. Inference and computational semantics. In H. Bunt and E. Thijsse, editors, 3rd International Workshop on Computational Semantics (IWCS-3), pages 5–21. Tilburg University, 1999.
D. Beaver. Presupposition. In van Benthem and ter Meulen [18], pages 939–1008.
S. Buvaĉ and I.A. Mason. Propositional logic of context. In R. Fikes and W. Lehnert, editors, Proceedings of the 11th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 412–419, Menlo Park, CA, 1993. AAAI Press.
J. Bos. Presupposition and VP-ellipsis. In 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING’ 94), Kyoto, Japan, 1994.
M. Fitting. First-Order Logic and Automated Theorem Proving. Springer-Verlag New York, 2nd edition, 1996.
L. Karttunen. Presupposition and linguistic context. Theoretical Linguistics, 1(1):181–194, 1974.
H. Kamp and U. Reyle. From Discourse to Logic. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.
H. Kamp and U. Reyle. A calculus for first order Discourse Representation Structures. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 5(3—4):297–348, 1996.
D. Lewis. Scorekeeping in a language game. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 8:339–359, 1979.
C. Monz and M. de Rijke. A resolution calculus for dynamic semantics. In J. Dix, L. Fari~nas del Cerro, and U. Fuhrbach, editors, Logics in Artificial Intelligence (JELIA’98), LNAI 1489, pages 184–198. Springer, 1998.
C. Monz and M. de Rijke. A tableau calculus for pronoun resolution. In N.V. Murray, editor, Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods (TABLEAUX’99), LNAI 1617, pages 247–262. Springer, 1999.
C. Monz. Computing presuppositions by contextual reasoning. In P. Bréezillon, R. Turner, J-C. Pomerol, and E. Turner, editors, Proceedings of the AAAI-99 Workshop on Reasoning in Context for AI Applications, 1999.
P. Piwek and E. Krahmer. Presuppositions in context: Constructing bridges. In P. Brézilon and M. Cavalcanti, editors, Formal and Linguistic Aspects of Context. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.
R. Stalnaker. On the representation of context. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 7(1):3–19, 1998. Special issue on Context in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence.
P. Strawson. Referring. Mind, 59:320–344, 1950.
J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen, editors. Handbook of Logic and Linguistics. Elsevier Science Press, 1997.
R. van der Sandt. Presupposition projection as anaphora resolution. Journal of Semantics, 9:333–377, 1992.
J. van Eijck and H. Kamp. Representing discourse in context. In van Benthem and ter Meulen [18], pages 179–237.
H. Zeevat. A compositional approach to Discourse Representation Theory. Linguistics and Philosophy, 12:95–131, 1989.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Monz, C. (1999). Contextual Inference in Computational Semantics. In: Bouquet, P., Benerecetti, M., Serafini, L., Brézillon, P., Castellani, F. (eds) Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1688. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48315-2_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48315-2_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66432-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48315-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive