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<Paper uid="C86-1042">
  <Title>LINKING PROPOSrFIONS</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="179" end_page="180" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
Kempen's Incremental Procedural Grammar (Hoenkamp,
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> 1983). Our extension (see Br(e, Smit &amp; Schotel, 1984) allows a user to enter two or more propositions and the type of relationship between them (inferential, temporal, causal, manner). Then it asks questions corresponding to the semantic tree for the corresponding type of SC, in order to select the appropriate kind of SC (e.g.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> hypothetical, denial, etc.). The program then uses the selected kind to find the correct SC in Dutch. So the selection of the kind of SC is independent of the language; the actual SC is selected from a table of SCs built up from the semantic definition of each SC within one language. Our program can also take a sentence as  input and break it down into main and sub propositions, replacing the linking SC by its language independent semantic definition. The important point is that the definition of the kinds of SC is language independent.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> We set out with the aim of establishing a Universal set of Linking Dimensions (ULD) that speakers use in linking propositions. It is the semantic trees that provide us with the ULDs. There are two levels at which we could hypothesize universality. The first, the strong hypothesis, is that the trees are the same in all languages. Then the kinds of SCs should be the same in all languages.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> For Dutch and English this is more or less the case. The differences in the SCs in the two languages come about in the different ambiguities that arise because the same SC is used for more than one kind of relationship (e0g.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> als ==&gt; if/when, since ==&gt; slnds/aangezlen). As these ambiguous uses are not the same in the two languages, difficulties arise for translation programs, llowever, this does not negate the strong hypothesis.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> If it does turn out that there are languages with SCs that cannot be defined using these trees, then a second, weaker, thesis may hold, namely that the building blocks from which the trees are made, are the same in all languages. That Polish and Japanese have SCs specifically for counterfactual inferences, leads us to suspect that it is this second thesis that will be found to hold. It will provide tlm basis for constructing a means for representing the functions performed by SCs in all languages in linking propositions.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> In either case, why is it that people relate propositions using the ULD? Is it because their brains are so constructed, or because their minds reflect the nature of the environment in which they find themselves? Is the ULD a natural or artificial phenomenon (Simon, 1981}?</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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