LINGUIST List 7.394

Thu Mar 14 1996

Books: Semantics, Computational Linguistics

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Dikran Karagueuzian, New book: Language and Logic/Semantics

LANGUAGE AND LOGIC/SEMANTICS
van der Does, Jaap (U. of Amsterdam) and van Eijck, Jan (CWI,
	Amsterdam) QUANTIFIERS, LOGIC AND LANGUAGE; ISBN:
	1-57586-001-5 (cloth) $69.95; 1-57586-000-7 (paper) $24.95
	pp. 424 CSLI Publications 1996:
 http://csli-www.stanford.edu/publications/
 email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu

Generalized quantifier theory is a central topic in logic with
important applications in semantics of natural language. Recent work
in the application field has led to new logical questions and new
theoretical developments, showing that quantifier theory is a truly
interdisciplinary field. This volume presents contributions to
quantifier theory and its applications and gives a good impression of
the depth and diversity of recent work in the field. The book starts
with a long introduction aimed at making the individual papers acces-
sible to a wide audience of logicians and linguists.


FORMAL LANGUAGES AND MODALITY
Ponse, Alban (U. of Amsterdam), de Rijke, Maarten (CWI, Amsterdam),
	and Venema, Yde (Free U., Amsterdam)
	MODAL LOGIC AND PROCESS ALGEBRA; ISBN: 1-881526-95-X (cloth)
	$49.95; 1-881526-96-8 $22.95 (paper) pp.326
	CSLI Publications 1996:
 http://csli-www.stanford.edu/publications/
 email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu

	Labeled transition systems are mathematical models for dynamic
behaviour, or processes, and thus form a research field of common
interest to logicians and theoretical computer scientists. In computer
science, this notion is a fundamental one in the formal analysis of
programming languages, in particular in process theory. In modal
logic, transition systems are the central object of study under the
name of Kripke models. This volume collects a number of papers on
modal logic and process theory. Its unifying theme is the notion of a
bisimulation. Bisimulations are relations over transition systems, and
provide a key tool in identifying the processes these structures
represent.

COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

Kanazawa, Makoto (Chiba U.), Pinon, Christopher (Stanford U.) and
 de Swart, Henriette (Stanford U.); QUANTIFIERS, DEDUCTION AND
 CONTEXT; ISBN: 1-57586-005-8 (cloth) $49.95, 1-57586-004-X
 (paper) $22.95. 197 pp. CSLI Publications 1996:
 http://csli-www.stanford.edu/publications/
 email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu
 This volume is an outgrowth of the second Workshop on Logic,
Language and Computation held at Stanford in the spring of 1993. The
workshop brought together researchers interested in natural language
to discuss the current state of the art at the borderline of logic,
linguistics and computer science. The papers in this collection fall
into three central research areas of the nineties, namely quantifiers,
deduction, and context. Each contribution reflects an ever-growing
interest in a more dynamic approach to meaning, which focuses on
inference patterns and the interpretation of sentences in the context
of a larger discourse.

van Deemter, Kees (IPO, The Netherlands) and Peters, Stanley (Stanford
	U.); SEMANTIC AMBIGUITY AND UNDERSPECIFICATION; ISBN:
	1-57586-029-5 (cloth) $69.95; 1-57586-028-7 (paper) $24.95,
	272 pp. CSLI Publications 1996:
 http://csli-www.stanford.edu/publications/
 email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu
	In recent years, the notion of ambiguity has come under close
scrutiny. This was mainly caused by developments in automatic natural
language processing, where it is becoming more common to use formal
representations of meaning that are themselves ambiguous. Such ambiguous
representations are called underspecified because they do not contain
sufficient information to determine their truth conditions uniquely.
In accordance with this new, 'underspecifying' perspective on
ambiguity, the papers in this volume deal not only with traditional
questions of disambiguation, but also with the theoretical
underpinnings of underspecified meaning representations and with the
possibilities of using these representations in logical inference.

Cole, Jennifer, Green, Georgia M. and Morgan, Jerry L. (U. of Illinois)
	LINGUISTICS AND COMPUTATION; ISBN: 1-881526-82-8 (cloth)
	$49.95; 1-881526-81-X (paper) $22.95; 296 pp.
	CSLI Publications 1996:
 http://csli-www.stanford.edu/publications/
 email: pubsroslin.stanford.edu
	This volume represents an exploration of the notion that the
principles of grammatical well-formedness and the principles of
language processing are interdependent. They deal with the nature of
syntactic structure and grammars for syntax, with strategies for
parsing and generation, and with aspects of phonological structure and
grammars for phonology. Some of the papers in this collection overlap
two or more areas, and demonstrate the importance of integrating
concepts from the theories of grammar and computation.