<div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:12.8px">Dear Ann (& developers by cc),</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">Thank you again for your feedback on the ESD pages. We expect these pages to be</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">something of a work in progress for quite a while and we always welcome feedback</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">(though as you can see, it may take us a while to react). In part spurred by your comments,</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">we have done some non-trivial editing on the ErgSemantics/Basics page, and so</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">would like to invite further feedback on this page in particular now:</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><a href="http://moin.delph-in.net/ErgSemantics/Basics" target="_blank">http://moin.delph-in.net/ErgSemantics/Basics</a><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">As you note, the goal of that page is to give a simple and concise explanation of aspects</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">of the representations which serves as background to more detailed and focused discussions</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">of the analyses of particular phenomena. That said, while trying to keep things simple,</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">we'd also like to not be wrong :)</div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><br></div><div style="font-size:12.8px">With thanks,</div><div style="font-size:12.8px">Emily, Stephan & Dan</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 7:37 AM, Ann Copestake <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk" target="_blank">aac10@cl.cam.ac.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> I'll have a go, but I do realise from previous discussion that you are intentionally simplifying, and that some cases where I regard something as an unhelpful oversimplification, you may still think this is justified. So, if I may, let me take one example from that page and try an explanation, and then see whether we can come to some mutual understanding. This isn't actually anything to do with predicate naming conventions, but I want to take a more straightforward case:<br> <br> <blockquote type="cite">The semantics corresponding to nominals prototypically involves an <span></span>instance variable and a (generalized) quantifier, which jointly we take <span></span>to denote a <em>set</em>, possibly one of singleton cardinality (for quantifiers <span></span>introduced by singular determiners, e.g. <em>a</em> or <em>this</em>) or even an <span></span>empty set (for the <em>no</em> quantifier, as in for example <em>no dogs bark</em>). </blockquote> <br> I take it here that you're talking about the semantics of a phrase like "every dog". If we're interpreting `every' as an ordinary quantifier, `every dog' could be written as \lambda P \forall x [ dog(x) => P(x) ] - it's of type <<e,t>,t> since it requires something of type <e,t> (e.g., an intransitive verb, like barks) to give a truth value. In fact, `every dog' denotes the set of all sets of which the set of dogs is a subset (so it does denote a set, but not, I think the one that your text would imply). With generalised quantifiers, something similar is going on, except that the quantifier is expressed in terms of the cardinality of the set of dogs and the set of Ps. <br> <br> Of course, in MRS, the BODY of the quantifier is missing (and this actually means that we can do the composition more straightforwardly though I won't go into that here). But that doesn't mean that the MRS for `every dog' denotes the set of all dogs. The semantics we've given for MRS is not in terms of real world denotation at all, but in terms of how it corresponds to a set of expressions in some object language, which might be predicate calculus with generalised quantifiers, but does not have to be. So there is an inconsistency with the MRS paper. (For me, this matters a lot, not least because this object language doesn't work as a general account of semantics, although it has its uses.) <br> But we have never provided a way of giving a semantics for partial MRSs in terms of lambda expressions. (We didn't develop an underspecified form of lambda calculus although, if I remember correctly, that's what UMRS did.) Anyway, even talking in an underspecified representation, because the body of the quantifier is uninstatiated, I think I would still say that an informal gloss of the meaning of `every dog' has to be the same as in the fully scoped version - i.e., as above, the set of all sets of which the set of dogs is a subset.<br> <br> So, technically, one cannot talk about an MRS denoting anything in a model corresponding to the real world. If you decide to make a loose translation of a partial MRS into the lambda calculus rough equivalent, that's OK, though I think you would have to make it much clearer that is what you are doing (and the gloss you've given here is incorrect, even viewed in that loose way). To draw an (imperfect) analogy - it's a bit like talking about an HPSG in terms of phrase structure trees. It can be a useful thing to do, both in terms of getting points over to non-specialists and in talking informally about some analyses, but it's vital that it is clear in such a discussion that we are only using the trees as some sort of abbreviation and that a syntactician unfamiliar with HPSG does not go away with the idea that we are really manipulating trees. Something that I hope we (possibly me and Guy) can do in advance of the LREC tutorial is to show a translation of an ERS fragment into something like a database query application - where quantifiers actually matter ... This might make all this clearer.<br> <br> As I say, I can understand if your reaction to these comments is that you're just trying to give an intuition of ERS for people who know no formal semantics. I don't personally think it works to do this (or at least, a really informal account might work, but I'd avoid talking about denotation in that case) but I understand you feel it is helpful. If you do want me to go through line-by-line and explain the formal issues with other parts of the pages, I can do that, but I don't think I should start that exercise unless we've got a common idea about the objective.<br> <br> Happy New Year!<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br> <br> Ann<br> </font></span><br> PS - in the paper that Dan and I co-authored in Corbett and Kibort's `Feature' volume (which I should put on my website) there is a discussion of what might be involved in `translating' ERS into a formal account of plurals. Perhaps this should help to indicate why I think it is a very positive feature of *MRS in general (and ERS) that it can be translated into different object languages.<div><div class="h5"><br> <br> <br> <div>On 01/01/2016 00:32, Stephan Oepen wrote:<br> </div> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre>a happy new year, everyone! </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre>My problem with this document is not so much that it's ERG-specific but that it is in contradiction to the MRS paper in various places. Which is unfortunate. </pre> </blockquote> <pre>i authored that page jointly with dan and emily, and i do not recall intentional deviations from the various publications on MRS. it would be helpful for us to know the specific contradictions you have in mind. all best, oe </pre> </blockquote> <br> </div></div></div> </blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><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>