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<Paper uid="C88-2110">
  <Title>On The Semantic Interpretation of Nominals</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="520" end_page="522" type="metho">
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4. Computational Implications of Lexical
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    <Paragraph position="0"> Organization In this section we discuss the relevance and implications of the above analysis of nominal semantics for computationM purposes. We will first look at the effect that richer semantic representations have on lexical selection in the process of language generation. Secondly, we outline how the problem of lexical disambiguation is facilitated by the use of such lexical entries in the process of analysis. Imagine a linguistic generation system in the service of a fairly rich semantic knowledge base and planner. Lexieal selection can be defined as the mapping from such  a knowledge base to a linguistic generation system. Appropriate word choice is, of course, a function of numerous factors and considerations (/Ward 1988/, /Pustejovsky and Nirenburg 1987/,/Danlos 1987/), but, in any case, the selection process makes sense only if the incoming semantic representation provides for there to be a distinction that is later reflected as a lexical distinction.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Consider now an implicitly relational nominal such as cigarette. The lexical representation for such a noun is given as (18).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> (18) ~iga~eue ~ ~Je\[~tffa~t(z) A ~(z, smok~(e, w, ~))\]. One of the properties of such nominals is that they may denote the situation or event that the object is embedded within (in this way, it seems to stand in a metonymic relation to the event). Thus, if given an underlying semantic form such as that in (19), the generator could produce, anmng others, the linguistic forms shown in (20).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3">  (19) 3e13e23z\[smoke(el,x) A cigarette(z) A bother(e2,el,john)\] (20) a. The cigarette's smoking bothered John.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> b. The smoking of the cigarette bothered John.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> c. The cigarette bothered John.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6">  The interesting thing to notice here is that (20c) makes use of the nominal without explicit mention of the predicate smoke. In general, such paraphrase classes as that in (20) involve the hidden event associated with an object. Furthermore, such classes exist mainly for nominals that are artifacts and have such lexical semantic representations. A similar decision procedure is at work in the examples in (21), this time in matrix object position. (21) a. John enjoyed the cigarette. (h-event = smoke) b. Mary enjoyed the book. (h-event = read) c. Bill hated the movie. (h-event = watch) For each nominal appearing as head in the object position in these examples, there is an associated hidden event that allows for the appropriate default presupposition for just what activity was enjoyed for each object. Thus, it is clear how the representation here provides for choice points in the process of lexical selection.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> As an indication of how lexical disambiguation can be facilitated with the richer nominal representations presented here, consider the multiple uses of a polysemous noun such as lisp, illustrated in (22).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8">  (22) a. John is running lisp.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> b. Mary has entered lisp.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> c. John knows lisp well.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11">  d. Mary is writing lisp.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> Now, it might be argued that these senses are all slight variants of one central sense for the nominal, perhaps that of lisp as a language. Yet what we know about lisp that makes it different from another language, say FORTRAN, is that it is an environment as well as a language. We can think of the preference rules in/Boguraev's 1979/lexical disambiguation system as being elements of strnctured packets, where the above senses are all logically related in one lexical representation of lisp; that is, its Lexical Con. ceptual Paradigm. These word senses compete as a group with other unrelated meanings. Then, finer discriminations are aclfieved by reference to the internal structure of the LCP for that word. We explore such a technique in /Pustejovsky and Anick 1988/and compare our approach to/Hirst 1987/and other lexical disambiguation systems.</Paragraph>
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