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<Paper uid="E83-1021">
  <Title>i AN APPROACH TO NATURAL LANGUAGE IN THE SI-NETS PARADIGtl</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="122" end_page="123" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
III WIIAT TYPE OF CONCEPTUAL OPERATIONS ?
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The conceptual operations of NL we intend to interpret are, for instance, Indlvldustions of objects, evaluations of objects, evaluations of properties of objects, evaluations of configurations of objects and so on.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Operations of this kind are trlggered by articles, adjectives, prepositional phrases, relative clauses and so on. These operations, already intuitively described in classical Linguistics, have been given more attention by investigations based on Logic. In the logic paradigm they can be viewed as classes, Sets, predicates etc..</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> In our opinion, the nature of these operations and, consequently, the description we intend to give of them, are not completely covered by logical analysis. Interesting results have been obtained by combining traditional logical systems with extensions of lambda calculi (~Jebber, 1978;1981). However, the types of complex procedurality peculiar to the operations have no~ yet been given a precise description; that is to say, procedurality has not been reduced to definite sets of restricted and clear procedures. Let us now introduce an example. The Italian definite and indefinite articles (il, un) can be described as follows: a) indlvlduatlon of a specific object; b) indlviduation of any one object; c) reference to an abstract prototype.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> In terms of logical description a) and b) may correspond to the iota operator and the existential quantifier of Logic; c) is similar to the universal quantifier even if the notion of a prototype is different, since it has an intenslonal nature.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> However, we think that tlle three possible descriptions of Italian articles may include types of operations not covered by the use of the above mentioned logical operators. The article, like many other linguistic entities, integrates different kinds of operations which, at the same time, manipulate descriptions of prototypes and individuals, search into different kinds of memory, etc.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> Let us introduce a new example. The adjective is one of the more conlplex phenomena of NL which cannot be reduced to the notion of predicate since it triggers a set of reasoning processes, that is to say, the manipulation of parts of knowledge.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> The following NP: I. un bambino rosso may be interpreted as: a child has hair, hair has a color, the color can be red. This NP cannot be literally translated into English without adding more information; the appropriate translation is : a red-halted child.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> In terms of SI-Nots this process can be represented as shown in figure I, assuming that  every lexlcal item of the NP has its own intensional representation.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> Figure I However, the adjective does not specify all the steps of the reasoning process that it triggers, but only indicates, together with the name, the two extreme points of the chain leaving the intermediate undefined. The entire process, using generic knowledge as the reference point, is shown in Figure 2.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> Figure 2 It would be oversimplifyiug, as stated above, to use the notion of predicate to interpret this complex process as well as the other possible interpretation of the adjective: the one corresponding to tile notion of &amp;quot;type of&amp;quot; aQ in the NP &amp;quot;a red color&amp;quot; (see fl~ure 3).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Figure 3 This type of phenomena can be investigated by deeply exploiting the structure and the semantics of SI-Nets. The structure of a role can be used as configuration of objects which are likely to be manipulated by complex processes not yet deeply investigated from any other viewpoint than the eplstemologlcal one. Once considered as a complex llnk, as it actually is, a role may be the locus where different processes can be triggered. It may be used simply to satisfy a structure of another role lying higher within the network or to trigger the complex processes we were talking about. The two behavlours mentioned exhibit different levels of abstraction; in the former case this means performing eplstemologlcal operations, while in the latter we simulate processes of a conceptual system used by NL.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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