Type-driven Semantic Interpretation and Feature Dependencies in R-LFG
Mark S. Johnson · The MIT Press eBooks · 1999
This paper describes a new formalization of Lexical-Functional Grammar called R-LFG (where the "R" stands for "Resource-based"). The formal details of R-LFG are presented in Johnson (1997); the present work concentrates on motivating R-LFG and explaining to linguists how it differs from the "classical" LFG framework presented in Kaplan and Bresnan (1982). This work is largely a reaction to the linear logic semantics for LFG developed by Dalrymple and colleagues (Dalrymple et al., 1995, 1996a,b,c). As explained below, it seems to me that their "glue language" approach bears a partial resemblance to those versions of Categorial Grammar which exploit the Curry-Howard correspondence to obtain semantic intepretation (van Benthem, 1995), such as Lambek Categorial Grammar and its descendants. A primary goal of this work is to develop a version of LFG in which this connection is made explicit, and in which semantic interpretation falls out as a by-product of the Curry-Howard correspondence rather than needing to be stipulated via semantic interpretation rules. Once one has enriched LFG's formal machinery with the linear logic mechanisms needed for semantic interpretation, it is natural to ask whether these make any existing components of LFG redundant. As Dalrymple and her colleagues note, LFG's f-structure completeness and coherence constraints fall out as a by-product of the linear logic machinery they propose for semantic interpretation, thus making those f-structure 2 Chapter 1. Type-driven semantic interpretation and feature dependencies in R-LFG mechanisms redundant. Given that linear logic machinery or something like it is independently needed for semantic interpretation, it seems reasonable to explore the extent to which it is capable of handling feature structure con...