Resource-Sensitivity, Binding and Anaphora: 80 (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 80) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1402016921 ISBN 13: 9781402016929

Publisher: Springer, 2003

Synopsis

Geert-Jan Kruijff & Richard T. Oehrle A categorial grammar is both a grammar and a type inference system. As a result of this duality, the categorial framework offers a natural setting in which to study questions of grammatical composition, both empirically and abstractly. There are affinities in this perspective, of course, to basic questions in formal language theory. But the fact that categorial grammars are type in­ ference systems makes possible intrinsic connections among syntactic types, syntactic type inference, semantic types, and semantic type inference, a con­ nection less apparent in the standard constructions of formal language theory. Fixing a system of grammatical type inference T, we may explore what gram­ matical phenomena are compatible with T-and equally, what grammatical phenomena are not. Equally, fixing a class of grammatical phenomena g, we may seek to ascertain what systems of type inference characterize g. This dual perspective is a strong current in the categorial literature, going back to the classical papers of Ajdukiewicz, Bar-Hillel, Curry, and Lambek.

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Review

From the reviews:

"This book is a special event, bringing together well-known names from logic, linguistics and computational linguistics. This fact speaks for itself about the value of the contributions. a ] The unique character of this outstanding collection of highest quality papers consists in most contributions adopting a (logical and linguistic) resource-sensitivity and resource management perspective for the resolution of phenomena such as contextual reference, quantification, binding and anaphora, across various levels of linguistic structuring a ] ." (Neculai Curteanu, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1056 (7), 2005)

Synopsis

The structure and properties of any natural language expression depend on its component sub-expressions - "resources" - and relations among them that are sensitive to basic structural properties of order, grouping, and multiplicity. Resource-sensitivity thus provides a perspective on linguistic structure that is well-defined and universally-applicable. The papers in this collection - by J. van Benthem, P. Jacobson, G. Jager, G-J. Kruijff, G. Morrill, R. Muskens, R. Oehrle, and A. Szabolcsi - examine linguistic resources and resource-sensitivity from a variety of perspectives, including: modal aspects of categorial type inference; multi-dimensional type structures and grammatical architecture; resource-sensitive aspects of binding and anaphora; resource-sensitive inference and discourse context. In particular, the book contains a number of papers treating anaphorically-dependent expressions as functions, whose application to an appropriate argument yields a type and an interpretation directly integratable with the surrounding grammatical structure.

To situate this work in a larger setting, the book contains two appendices: an introductory guide to resource-sensitivity; and, notes on the historical background of resource-sensitive approaches to binding and anaphora.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1402016921
• ISBN 13: 9781402016929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 319
• Editor: Kruijff Geert-Jan M., Oehrle Richard T.