La literatura sobre las relaciones entre las personas y la técnica se refiere a análisis heredados de la economía, la sociología, la política, etc. Estas miradas abarcan a la técnica de forma global dificultando el estudio de algunos procesos que ocurren entre cada persona y la técnica. En este sentido, buscaremos explicitar estas relaciones a través de los productos de la técnica como mediadores sociales. Con esta base tienen sentido los criterios de las tecnologías entrañables para que esta mediación se (...) transforme en una relación deseable en términos sociales, proponiendo a la honestidad como concepto de consenso primario. (shrink)

Parsing of argumentative structures has become a very active line of research in recent years. Like discourse parsing or any other natural language task that requires prediction of linguistic struc...

A* PCFG parsing can dramatically reduce the time required to find the exact Viterbi parse by conservatively estimating outside Viterbi probabilities. We discuss various estimates and give efficient algorithms for computing them. On Penn treebank sentences, our most detailed estimate reduces the total number of edges processed to less than 3% of that required by exhaustive parsing, and even a simpler estimate which can be pre-computed in under a minute still reduces the work by a factor of 5. (...) The algorithm extends the classic A* graph search procedure to a certain hypergraph associated with parsing. Unlike bestfirst and finite-beam methods for achieving this kind of speed-up, the A* parser is guaranteed to return the most likely parse, not just an approximation. The algorithm is also correct for a wide range of parser control strategies and maintains a worst-case cubic time bound. (shrink)

In this paper I tackle the question of what basic form an analytical method for articulating and ultimately assessing visual representations should take. I start from the assumption that scientific images, being less prone to interpretive complication than artworks, are ideal objects from which to engage this question. I then assess a recent application of Nelson Goodman's aesthetics to the project of parsing scientific images, Laura Perini's ‘The truth in pictures’. I argue that, although her project is an important (...) one, her Goodmanian conventionalism produces a method of analysis that is incapable of adequately parsing a certain class of pictures and her focus on truth is unnecessary. This speaks against the promise of Goodman's analytical strategy for elucidating visual content and reasoning in the sciences and elsewhere. As an alternative, I develop John Willats’ analytical method and compare it to Perini's through engaging three of her examples—a chemical diagram, a graph and an electron micrograph. Ultimately, a space remains open for a mixed system where Willats’ account provides pictorial analysis and the Goodman–Perini approach parses visual languages. (shrink)

This paper extends the Earley parsing algorithm for context free languages [3] to the case of sequentially indexed languages. Sequentially indexed languages are related to indexed languages [1, 2]. The difference is that parallel processing of index stacks is replaced by sequential processing [4].

In this paper, we use antecedent-final conditionals to formulate two problems for parsing-based theories of presupposition projection and triviality of the kind given in Schlenker 2009. We show that, when it comes to antecedent-final conditionals, parsing-based theories predict filtering of presuppositions where there is in fact projection, and triviality judgments for sentences which are in fact felicitous. More concretely, these theories predict that presuppositions triggered in the antecedent of antecedent-final conditionals will be filtered (i.e. will not project) if (...) the negation of the consequent entails the presupposition. But this is wrong: John isn’t in Paris, if he regrets being in France intuitively presupposes that John is in France, contrary to this prediction. Likewise, parsing-based approaches to triviality predict that material entailed by the negation of the consequent will be redundant in the antecedent of the conditional; but John isn’t in Paris, if he’s in France and Mary is with him is intuitively felicitous, contrary to these predictions. Importantly, given that the trigger appears in sentence-final position, both incremental (left-to-right) and symmetric versions of such theories make the same predictions. These data constitute a challenge to the idea that presupposition projection and triviality should be computed on the basis of parsing. This issue is important because it relates to the more general question as to whether presupposition and triviality calculation should be thought of as a pragmatic post-compositional phenomenon or as part of compositional semantics (as in the more traditional dynamic approaches). We discuss a solution which allows us to maintain the parsing-based pragmatic approach; it is based on an analysis of conditionals which incorporates a presupposition that their antecedent is compatible with the context, together with a modification to Schlenker’s (2009) algorithm for calculating local contexts so that it takes into account presupposed material. As we will discuss, this solution works within a framework broadly similar to that of Schlenker’s (2009), but it doesn’t extend in an obvious way to other parsing-based accounts (e.g. parsing-based trivalent approaches). We conclude that a parsing-based theory can be maintained, but only if we adopt a substantial change of perspective on the framework. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel psycholinguistic parser and tests it against experimental and corpus reading data. The parser builds on the recent research into memory structures, which argues that memory retrieval is content‐addressable and cue‐based. It is shown that the theory of cue‐based memory systems can be combined with transition‐based parsing to produce a parser that, when combined with the cognitive architecture ACT‐R, can model reading and predict online behavioral measures (reading times and regressions). The parser's modeling capacities are (...) tested against self‐paced reading experimental data (Grodner & Gibson, 2005), eye‐tracking experimental data (Staub, 2011), and a self‐paced reading corpus (Futrell et al., 2018). (shrink)

The University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Department is home of a long-running project to create syntactically annotated (parsed) corpora of historical English. The project is directed by Anthony Kroch, Professor of Linguistics, and the research associate in charge of corpus annotation is Dr. Beatrice Santorini. The Middle English corpus was constructed by Dr. Ann Taylor, now research associate in charge of corpus annotation at the University of York, England.

Seventy-three children between 6 and 7 years of age were presented with a problem having ambiguous subgoal ordering. Performance in this task showed reliable fingerprints: a non-monotonic dependence of performance as a function of the distance between the beginning and the end-states of the problem, very high levels of performance when the first move was correct, and states in which accuracy of the first move was significantly below chance. These features are consistent with a non-Markov planning agent, with an inherently (...) inertial decision process, and that uses heuristics and partial problem knowledge to plan its actions. We applied a statistical framework to fit and test the quality of a proposed planning model. Our framework allows us to parse out independent contributions to problem-solving based on the construction of the value function and on general mechanisms of the search process in the tree of solutions. We show that the latter are correlated with children's performance on an independent measure of planning, while the former is highly domain specific. (shrink)

This chapter explores parsing and grammar in children, with an emphasis on how children resolve sentences with ambiguous scope. It focuses on an ambiguity involving the universal quantifier every in subject position along with a negated main predicate, as in the sentence “Every horse didn’t jump over the fence.” One interpretation of this sentence is the “surface-scope” interpretation, which views the expression every horse as a reference to all the horses in the set; thus, each horse in the set (...) did not jump over the fence. Another interpretation is the “inverse-scope” interpretation, whereby some horses jumped over the fence while others did not. The chapter presents evidence suggesting that children tend to prefer the surface-scope interpretation and cannot obtain the inverse-scope interpretation. In other words, children systematically use the surface position of the relevant quantificational elements to determine scope relations. The chapter also discusses negation and quantified noun phrases, along with isomorphism. Finally, it discusses the implications of these findings for language development and sentence processing. (shrink)

The input data to grammar learning algorithms often consist of overt forms that do not contain full structural descriptions. This lack of information may contribute to the failure of learning. Past work on Optimality Theory introduced Robust Interpretive Parsing (RIP) as a partial solution to this problem. We generalize RIP and suggest replacing the winner candidate with a weighted mean violation of the potential winner candidates. A Boltzmann distribution is introduced on the winner set, and the distribution’s parameter $T$ (...) is gradually decreased. Finally, we show that GRIP, the Generalized Robust Interpretive Parsing Algorithm significantly improves the learning success rate in a model with standard constraints for metrical stress assignment. (shrink)

The main result in this paper is a method for obtaining derivation trees from sentences of certain formal grammars. No parsing algorithm was previously known to exist for these grammars.Applied to Montague's PTQ the method produces all parses that could correspond to different meanings. The technique directly addresses scope and reference and provides a framework for examining these phenomena. The solution for PTQ is implemented in an efficient and useful computer program.

In this paper, the historical development of the clitic systems of Standard Modern, Cypriot and Pontic Greek is discussed. These three varieties not only present the whole range of variation one can find across clitic systems in Greek but, furthermore, derive from a common linguistic ancestor, i.e. Koine Greek. This paper argues that the transition from Koine Greek to the Medieval varieties and from the Medieval varieties to the respective modern ones can be explained by making the assumption that routinisation (...) and parsing/hearer assymetries are two important factors behind syntactic change. The claim is that the transition from Koine to the Medieval Greek varieties involves the emergence of a clitic system with encoded syntactic constraints out of a freer one, where clitic positioning was regulated by pragmatic preferences rather than syntactic constraints. Then, the transition to the modern varieties from the respective medieval ones is explained, at least partly, on the assumption that production/parsing mismatches are capable of triggering syntactic change. This last assumption combined with: the tendency to obtain more generalised parsing triggers for parsing the individual clitics and the fact that the Medieval varieties in question differ in minimal but crucial ways, provides us an explanation for the transition to the modern varieties. (shrink)

While symbolic parsers can be viewed as deduction systems, this view is less natural for probabilistic parsers. We present a view of parsing as directed hypergraph analysis which naturally covers both symbolic and probabilistic parsing. We illustrate the approach by showing how a dynamic extension of Dijkstra’s algorithm can be used to construct a probabilistic chart parser with an Ç´Ò¿µ time bound for arbitrary PCFGs, while preserving as much of the flexibility of symbolic chart parsers as allowed by (...) the inherent ordering of probabilistic dependencies. (shrink)

This paper contains the full code of an implementation in Haskell [2], in ‘literate programming’ style [3], of an approach to deductive parsing based on [4]. We focus on the case of the Earley [1] parsing algorithm for CF languages.

C.B. Macpherson's “Possessive Individualist” reading of Locke is one of the most radical and influential interpretations in the history of exegesis. Despite a substantial critical response over the past five decades, Macpherson's reading remains orthodox in various circles in the humanities generally, particularly in legal studies, and his interpretation of several crucial passages has unwittingly been followed even by his sharpest critics within Lockean scholarship. In order to present the definitive rebuttal to this interpretation, and so finally to lay it (...) to rest, I argue that every one of Macpherson's key pieces of textual evidence can be rejected entirely on its own terms; that is, by reference to no more than its immediate context. In this way I contend that fault of the Possessive Individualist reading lies far deeper than mere cherry-picking of the Lockean corpus, but centrally involves misreading, misplacing and misrepresenting the very parts of Locke's work Macpherson cites as evidence for his reading. (shrink)

This paper presents empirical studies and closely corresponding theoretical models of the performance of a chart parser exhaustively parsing the Penn Treebank with the Treebank’s own CFG grammar. We show how performance is dramatically affected by rule representation and tree transformations, but little by top-down vs. bottom-up strategies. We discuss grammatical saturation, including analysis of the strongly connected components of the phrasal nonterminals in the Treebank, and model how, as sentence length increases, the effective grammar rule size increases as (...) regions of the grammar are unlocked, yielding super-cubic observed time behavior in some configurations. (shrink)

This paper describes a prototype implementation of a Labelled Deduction System for natural language interpretation, where interpretation is taken to be the process of understanding a natural language utterance. The implementation models the process of understanding wh-gap dependencies in questions and relative clauses for a fragment of English. The paper is divided in three main sections. In Section 1, we introduce the basic architecture of the system. Section 2 outlines a prototype implementation of wh-binding and indicates its potential for explanation (...) of linguistic phenomena, and in Section 3 we briefly set the model within a large theoretical perspective, comparing it to other type-logical approaches to natural language analysis. (shrink)

This commentary argues that dialogue alignment can be explained if parsing-directed grammar formalisms are adopted. With syntax defined as monotonic growth of semantic representations as each word is parsed, alignment between interlocutors is shown to be expected. Hence, grammars can be evaluated according to relative success in characterizing dialogue phenomena.

Navigating the ontology of color used to be a simple affair. There was the naive view that colors really are in objects the way they appear, and the view that they are secondary qualities to cause certain experiences in us. Today, there are myriad well-developed views but no satisfactory taxonomy of philosophical theories on color. In this article, I first examine the two newest taxonomies on offer and argue that they are inadequate. In particular, I look at Brogaard’s taxonomy and (...) then Cohen’s. One of the reasons I am displeased with Brogaard and Cohen’s taxonomies is that I find it implausible that dispositions are relational properties. I provide an argument against this way of classifying dispositions. Having learned from the vices and virtues of Brogaard and Cohens’ taxonomies, I provide what I believe is a much-enhanced way of taxonomizing philosophical views on color. My taxonomy rules out certain views, clarifies others, and shows that there is an unnoticed view worthy of consideration. (shrink)

This report details experimental results of using stochastic disambiguation models for parsing sentences from the Redwoods treebank (Oepen et al., 2002). The goals of this paper are two-fold: (i) to report accuracy results on the more highly ambiguous latest version of the treebank, as compared to already published results achieved by the same stochastic models on a previous version of the corpus, and (ii) to present some newly developed models using features from the HPSG signs, as well as the (...) MRS dependency graphs. (shrink)

Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is one of the most prominent theories employed in deep parsing of natural language. Many linguistic theories are arguably best formalized in extensions of modal or dynamic logic (Keller, Feature logics, infinitary descriptions and grammar, 1993; Kracht, Linguistics Philos 18:401–458, 1995; Moss and Tiede, In: Blackburn, van Benthem, and Wolther (eds.) Handbook of modal logic, 2006), and HPSG seems to be no exception. Adequate extensions of dynamic logic have not been studied in detail, however; (...) the most important aspect is the reference to sets of substructures. In this paper, an adequate extension is identified, and some important results are established: Satisfiability is highly undecidable, and model checking is shown to be in EXPTIME and PSPACE-hard. A fragment with polynomial time model checking procedures is identified; it is shown to cover considerable fragments of HPSG. (shrink)

Music can be interpreted by attributing syntactic relationships to sequential musical events, and, computationally, such musical interpretation represents an analogous combinatorial task to syntactic processing in language. While this perspective has been primarily addressed in the domain of harmony, we focus here on rhythm in the Western tonal idiom, and we propose for the first time a framework for modeling the moment‐by‐moment execution of processing operations involved in the interpretation of music. Our approach is based on (1) a music‐theoretically motivated (...) grammar formalizing the competence of rhythmic interpretation in terms of three basic types of dependency (preparation, syncopation, and split; Rohrmeier, 2020), and (2) psychologically plausible predictions about the complexity of structural integration and memory storage operations, necessary for parsing hierarchical dependencies, derived from the dependency locality theory (Gibson, 2000). With a behavioral experiment, we exemplify an empirical implementation of the proposed theoretical framework. One hundred listeners were asked to reproduce the location of a visual flash presented while listening to three rhythmic excerpts, each exemplifying a different interpretation under the formal grammar. The hypothesized execution of syntactic‐processing operations was found to be a significant predictor of the observed displacement between the reported and the objective location of the flashes. Overall, this study presents a theoretical approach and a first empirical proof‐of‐concept for modeling the cognitive process resulting in such interpretation as a form of syntactic parsing with algorithmic similarities to its linguistic counterpart. Results from the present small‐scale experiment should not be read as a final test of the theory, but they are consistent with the theoretical predictions after controlling for several possible confounding factors and may form the basis for further large‐scale and ecological testing. (shrink)

The paper presents a way to transform pregroup grammars into contextfree grammars using functional composition. The same technique can also be used for the proof-nets of multiplicative cyclic linear logic and for Lambek calculus allowing empty premises.

The dual responsibility of maintaining our copies of ancient writings in a state in which they reflect their originals intelligibly and authentically and of reinterpreting these writings in a manner which is both faithful and useful to later generations and their problems is so demanding that it has very frequently seemed justly to call forth a division of labor. But the divorce between the scholar and the philosophical interpreter has not always been fertile, as the more pedantic and frantic interpretations (...) of Plato demonstrate. Professor Brumbaugh seeks to avoid the specialist's isolation by uniting the two functions in his Plato on the One. The result is the unusual combination of the soundest and most elaborate work on the text of the second part of the Parmenides, so far as I can determine, yet done in this country, and in addition some very imaginative and varied philosophical interpretations. (shrink)

We demonstrate that an unlexicalized PCFG can parse much more accurately than previously shown, by making use of simple, linguistically motivated state splits, which break down false independence assumptions latent in a vanilla treebank grammar. Indeed, its performance of 86.36% (LP/LR F1) is better than that of early lexicalized PCFG models, and surprisingly close to the current state-of-theart. This result has potential uses beyond establishing a strong lower bound on the maximum possible accuracy of unlexicalized models: an unlexicalized PCFG is (...) much more compact, easier to replicate, and easier to interpret than more complex lexical models, and the parsing algorithms are simpler, more widely understood, of lower asymptotic complexity, and easier to optimize. (shrink)

\ is a 7000 line Prolog parser/theorem-prover for logical categorial grammar. In such logical categorial grammar syntax is universal and grammar is reduced to logic: an expression is grammatical if and only if an associated logical statement is a theorem of a fixed calculus. Since the syntactic component is invariant, being the logic of the calculus, logical categorial grammar is purely lexicalist and a particular language model is defined by just a lexical dictionary. The foundational logic of continuity was established (...) by Lambek while a corresponding extension including also logic of discontinuity was established by Morrill and Valentín :167–192, 2010). \ implements a logic including as primitive connectives the continuous and discontinuous connectives of the displacement calculus, additives, 1st order quantifiers, normal modalities, bracket modalities, and universal and existential subexponentials. In this paper we review the rules of inference for these primitive connectives and their linguistic applications, and we survey the principles of Andreoli’s focusing, and of a generalisation of van Benthem’s count-invariance, on the basis of which \ is implemented. (shrink)