Dick to Nik:
#>The second part is a representational one. How do you want to represent
semantic
#>information? This question is contingent on the first one because the more
#>linguisticaly relevant semantics there is, the less you can reduce it to
#>annotations on a syntactic representation.
### Yes. As you know I think there is a great deal of linguistically
#relevant semantics, but in any case I don't see how semantics can be
#reduced to annotations on a syntactic representation - or why we might want
#to do reduce it like that.
If we define English grammar as the rules that define the set of English sentences,
then all the grammar need know about the semantics of, say, _dog_ is that
its sense is 'dog': from the grammar's perspective, 'dog' is a mere address
that tells the pragmatic interpreter where to look in the extragrammatical
encylopedia. The reason why we might want to reduce semantics this
way is that it simplifies the grammar. I think that all linguistically (= grammatically)
relevant semantics can be handled in this way. Although syntax is pervaded
by semantics, in that not only lexical but also nonlexical categories have
meaning, the meaning itself can be represented by a mere encyclopedia
address. It follows from this that sentences that differ in linguistically-encoded
meaning must perforce differ in their syntax too.
--And.
|