A view on propositions: graphics for meaningful parsing and generation
Crit Cremers
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
The meaning of a sentence - a proposition - can be computed as a network of thematic relations between annotated concepts, i.e. as a connected graph. The network embodies the class of semantic consequences of a sentence. In the Delilah automaton of Dutch, a recipe for a propositional graph, cast in a logical formalism, is the main yield of parsing. Furthermore, such a graph is both the input and the outcome of a sentential generation procedure.
This talk demonstrates donut-like visualizations of several complex sentences. In addition, It addresses the following questions about propositional graphs:
- what are their basic dimensions?
- how can negation, quantification, and intensionality be expressed?
- why and how do they differ from syntactic and derivational trees?
- how can visualizations contribute to meaningful natural language processing?