A dynamic syntax-semantics interface
Tsutomu Fujinami · 1999
The relation between syntax and semantics of natural language can be regarded as a constraint. With the ideas from Channel Theory, the way the content of a sentence is conveyed by an utterance can be captured as a linguistic channel. To study the operational aspects of such a channel, we construct it as a system of communicating processes by turning to the ß-calculus. We show how a concurrent bottom-up chart parser can be encoded in the calculus and how a semantic object similar to those employed in Situation Theoretic Discourse Representation Theory can be created as the result of the interactions between processes, which are also encoded as a process. We conclude the paper with the discussion on how the system can be studied and its implication. 1 Introduction In the study of natural language semantics, we are interested in how information can be conveyed from one to another by utterances. With the ideas from Channel Theory [Bar93, BS92, SB93], we regard a particular utterance signa...