Parsing and Interpretation in the Minimalist Paradigm

J. S. Williams, Jugal Kumar Kalita · Computational Intelligence · 2000

In this paper, we discuss how recent theoretical linguistic research focusing on the Minimalist Program (MP) (Cho95, Mar95, Zwa94) can be used to guide the parsing of a useful range of natural language sentences and the building of a logical representation in a principles‐based manner. We discuss the components of the MP and give an example derivation. We then propose parsing algorithms that recreate the derivation structure starting with a lexicon and the surface form of a sentence. Given the approximated derivation structure, MP principles are applied to generate a logical form, which leads to linguistically based algorithms for determining possible meanings for sentences that are ambiguous due to quantifier scope.

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