<div dir="ltr">Dear all,<div><br></div><div>The UW group has been reading and discussing Copestake et al 2001</div><div>and Copestake 2007, trying to get a better understanding of the MRS</div><div>algebra. We have a few questions---I think some of these issues have been</div><div>proposed for the Summit, but I'm impatient, so I thought I'd try to get</div><div>a discussion going over email. UW folks: Please feel free to chime in</div><div>with other questions I haven't remembered just now.</div><div><br></div><div>The two big ones are:</div><div><br></div><div>(1) Copestake et al 2001 don't explicitly state what the purpose of the</div><div>algebra is. My understanding is that it provides a guarantee that the MRSs</div><div>produced by a grammar are well-formed, so long as the grammar is</div><div>algebra-compliant. Well-formed MRS (in this sense) would necessarily</div><div>have an interpretation because the algebra shows how to compose the</div><div>interpretation for each sement. Is this on track? Are there other reasons</div><div>to want an algebra?</div><div><br></div><div>Subquestions:</div><div><br></div><div> (1a) I was a bit surprised to see the positing of labels in the model. What</div><div>would a label correspond to in the world? Is this akin to reification of propositions?</div><div>Are we really talking about all the labels here, or just those that survive once</div><div>an MRS is fully scoped?</div><div> (1b) How does this discussion relate to what Ann was talking about at IWCS</div><div>regarding the logical fragment of the ERG and the rest of the ERG? That is,</div><div>if all of the ERG were algebra-compliant, does that mean that all of the ERSs</div><div>it can produce are compositional in their interpretation? Or does that require</div><div>a model that can "keep up"?</div><div> </div><div>(2) Copestake et al state: "Since the constraints [= constraints on grammar rules</div><div>that make them algebra-compliant] need not be checked at runtime, it seems </div><div>better to regard them as metalevel conditions on the description of the grammar, </div><div>which can anyway easily be checked by code which converts the TFS into the </div><div>algebraic representation." What is the current thinking on this? Is it in fact</div><div>possible convert TFS (here I assume that means lexical entries & rules?) to</div><div>algebraic representation? Has this been done?</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks,</div><div>Emily</div><div><br></div><div><div><br></div>-- <br><div><div dir="ltr">Emily M. Bender<br>Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>Check out CLMS on facebook! <a href="http://www.facebook.com/uwclma" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/uwclma</a><br></div></div> </div></div>