Semantics and Quantification in Natural Language Question Answering

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the semantic interpretation of natural English sentences by a computerized question-answering system, and specifically with the problems of interpreting and using quantification in such systems. These issues are presented and discussed from the perspective of four different natural language understanding systems with which the author has been involved. The presentation includes the process of semantic interpretation, the nature and organization of semantic interpretation rules, a notation for representing semantic interpretations (the meaning representation language), the semantics of that notation, and the generation and scoping of quantifiers. Also discussed are a variety of loose ends, open questions, and directions for future research. Particular attention is given to the interaction of syntactic, semantic (and pragmatic) information.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 1977
Accession Number
ADA047600

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People

  • W. A. Woods

Organizations

  • BBN Technologies

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Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automated Speech Recognition
  • Chemical Elements
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Contracts
  • Grammars
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Natural Language Understanding
  • Natural Languages
  • Semantics

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  • Computational Linguistics