A Lexical Extension of Montague Semantics
William C. Purdy · Syracuse University Libraries (Syracuse University) · 1988
Montague's linguistic theory provides a completely formalized account of lan-guage in general and natural language in particular. It would appear to be espe-cially applicable to the problem of natural language understanding by computer systems. However the theory does not deal with meaning at the lexical level. As a result, deduction in a system based on Montague semantics is severely restricted. This paper considers lexical extension of Montague semantics as a way to remove this restriction. Representation of lexical semantics by a logic program or semantic net is complex. An alternative representation, called a se-mantic space, is described. This alternative lacks the expressiveness of a logic program but it offers conceptual simplicity and intrinsically parallel structure.