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<Paper uid="C90-2028">
  <Title>Reading Distinction in MT*</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="162" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Some common methods
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Since every reading distinction creates lexical ambiguity that has to be solved, it seems attractive to use the features expressing the relevant information as criterion for answering (1): An lu is ambiguous between $1 and $2 iff there is a feature describing the dilference.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> If we only take morphological and sylltactic features, many intuitively clear cases of ambiguity (e.g. bank as financial institution vs. as  river verge) cannot be expressed. This will lead to problems in transfer or in generation. On the other hand, these features will cause unwanted distinctions as well, e.g. Prench fonctionnair'e (civil servant) with gender masculine or feminine, and kneel with past tense l~neegd or knelt. It makes no sense to try to disambiguate these.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The use of semantic features to define alnbiguity should be rejected for similar reasons. First, we have to determine a fixed set of features a priori, since otherwise no answers to questions of reading distinction evolve. This imposes an artificial upper bound on reading distinction. Moreover, the availability of a certain feature does not mean that it has to be assigned in all cases. We will certainly have a feature expressing the male/fema.le contra.st, but it is not desirable to create two readings of parent accordingly, leading to a translation of pa~r.nts into something meaning mother(s) a~zd/or Jhther~,:).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Alternatively, we couhl argue thal, since translation is the goal, it shouh\] be the criterium \[br reading distinction as well, answering (1): An lu having two senses is ambiguous iff there are diffe.rent translations for the two senses. Leaving aside the non.-trivial problem of determining whether there are different translations, we have to admit that there are cases of exceptional distinctions in one language, e.g. fle'uve vs. r'ivi&amp;c in French, meani ng river ending in a, sea or in another river respectively. &amp;quot;l&amp;quot;hese distinctions will influence all other dictionaries in the system, in the sense that e.g. English 7+iver and Dutch r'ivier be-.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> come anabiguous, and there are two translat;ion rules between them. If we restrict our attention to a limited grou I) of languages, e.g.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> the languages in the system, the system becomes difficult to extend, siace adding a new language from outside this group will affect all existing dictionaries. Otherwise there is a conceptual problem, since it will ,rover be possible to decide that an lu is vague, unless we know al\] languages of the world. Instead, cases of exceptional distinctions, bilinqual ambiguities, are best ihandled in transfer between the two languages, because they really are translation pro blems..</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> Summarizing, taking the means (features) or the goal (translation) as a criterium for read-.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> ing distinction results in decisions that cause various practical problems and are intuitively incorrect. Furthermore these strategies detach the notion of reading from meaning, which is theoretically undesirable.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> Taking only intuitions as our guide will link reading to meaning, but if even trained intuitions or lexicographers do not prevent inconsistencies, as can be seen in many published dictionaries, there is not much hope of reaching consistency, unless we manage to find some support for the intuitions.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="162" end_page="163" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 A semantic method
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The tests I will propose here to decide on reading distinction are based on monolingual meaning, and yield a substantially greater degree of consistency than direct, ui~.aided intuitions. It is based on the following conjecture.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> (2) There is a set of processes P, that, given a single occurrence of an lu, can stretch the actual meaning of the 1,l in the context to the boundaries of the reading the lu has, but not beyond.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> In order to be able to check the results, we will first consider some tests where specific processes in P are used, as a.pplied to some intuitiveh, clear cases of ambiguity (e.g.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> ba~dv&amp;quot; as financial institution vs. river verge) and vagueness (e.g. elephant as Indian elephant vs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> African elephant). Then the scope of these tests will be expanded to other cases.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> A well-known test evolving from (2) is based on conjunction. Lakoff (1970) proposed a. test where anaphoric so in the second clause of a conjunction refers back to an antecedent containing the lu :for which the question of reading distinction arises, ms in (3).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6">  (3) a. John went to a bank this morning, and so did Mary.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> b. John saw an elephant, and so did  Mary.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> The question to be asked in this cast is whether tile sentence is semantically normal when tile anaphor is interpreted in the other sense than its antecedent. Clearly, (3a) is strange in this  interpretation, whereas (3b) is normal, confirming that bank but not elephant is ambiguous in the relevant way (cf. Cruse (1986) on the use of semantic normality judgements). Other anaphors, e.g. one, there can be used as well. The answers are more reliable in case of an antecedent contmning less lexical material outside the lu in question. In (3a), the antecedent of so is go to a bank, and ambiguity might be claimed to arise from the verb. Using one instead of so takes away this possibility, which is especially relevant in less clear cases.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> Other processes use quantifiers. One, based  on Wiggins (1971), uses universal quantification. It is exemplified in (4).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> (4) a. All banks in this town are safe.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> b. All elephants in th.is zoo are old.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12">  The question to be asked here is whether all X can be interpreted as all $1 or all ,%., or only as all $1 and all $2. Whereas (4a) can mean either that there is no danger of flooding or that bank-robbers are effectively discouraged, and it is odd when used to mean both, (4b) can only be used to predicate over both African and Indian elephants in the zoo that they are old. A variant using negation in the same way is discussed by Kempson &amp; Cormack (1981).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> A slightly different test can be pertbrmed with a universal quantifier somewhat remote from the relevant lu, as in (5).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14">  (5) a. Every town has a bank.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="15"> b. Every zoo ha~s an elephant.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="16">  The question to be asked here is whether the X (bank/elephant) has to be interpreted in the same sense for every Y (town/zoo). In a similar way numerals can be used as in (6), and coordination as in (7), requiring the same question.  (6) a. This town has two banks.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="17"> b. This zoo has two elephants.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="18"> (7) a.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="19"> b.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="20"> John and Mary went to a bank this  morning.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="21"> John and Mary saw an elephant this morning.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="22"> Summarizing, there are three main classes of processes in P behaving as in (2). The first one refers to two elements from the extension of the lu, one of them by an anaphor, as in (3). The second one refers to the flfll extension of a reading at once, as in (4). The third one refers to a group of elements in the extension, exploiting distributivity, as in (5)-(7). Each class is associated with a difl'erent question the answer of which determines whether an analysis as ambiguity or as vagueness is correct. There are various realizations of test sentences for each class, some of which are subject to independently motivated constraints. In a natural way an intuitively appealing definition of reading evolves as in (8).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="23"> (8) A reading of an lu is a coherent group of senses, the boundaries of which ('aunot be crossed by a single occurrence of the lu without losing semantic normality.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="163" end_page="165" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 The tests in actual use
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In the previous section, semantic tests were shown to give correct answers in cases where we can check them. This proves that we should not immediately reject the tests. The reason we need them however, is that there are many cases wtmre unaided intuition is not sufficiently determinate, so that conflicts on the correct an,~tysls might arise.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> A well-known problem area is the al~alysis of privative oppositions, where one of the senses is more general and includes the other one.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> Both dog and lion have senses animal belonging to a particular species of mammals and male specimen of that species. According to Kempson (1980) they are both vague with respect to these senses, but Zwicky ~: Sadock (1975) claim that dog but not lion is ambiguous. Applying various tests to them we get the following sentences.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3">  (9) a. John has a dog, and Mary ihas one too.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> b. The zoo has a lion, and the circus has one too.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> (lo) a.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> b.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7">  All dogs of this breed are shortsighted. null All lions in this wild reserve have been killed by poachers.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8">  (11) a. This family has two dogs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> b. This zoo has two lions.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10">  The sentences (9) and (1.1) cannot lead to a. conclusion for independent reasons. Since an individual or a group in the more specific sense of the lu is also an individual or a group in the general sense, the general sense is always available to cover up the opposition. This is not the case when the flfll extensions are compared, however. Therefore from (10) we can in-deed conclude that dog is ambiguous and lion is not. Both (10a) and (10b) have the general interpretation, but only (10a) also has the more specific one (cf .... , b,tt not the bitches vs. *..., but not the lionesses).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> Another problem that comes up is the construction of test sentences for other syntactic categories than nouns. Although the various processes are most easily demonstrated with nouns, nothing in the theory refers to nouns directly. VP-anaphors, e.g. so, can also be used for w~rbs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12">  (12) a. John has been running 'all day, and so has his washing machine.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> b. John has been running all day, and so has his dog.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14"> (13) John followed Mary, and Bill (lid so  too.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="15"> The sentences in (12) show the ambiguity of run between tile senses with a human and a machine subject, and the vagueness between senses with a biped and a quadruped subject. For transitive verbs, such as follow, having the sense understand and go after, the result of the test is more disputable, since (13) shows the ambiguity of follow Mary, and one could argue that it is due to ambiguity of Mary, e.g. between the senses thinking person and spatial object. Therefore, the use of a non-lexical anaphor, indicated by # in the examples, is to be preferred.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="16"> (14) John followed Mary, and Bill # Kate. It is rather difficult to construct a sentence with a quantifier over the verb comparable to (4) for nouns. Rather, a sentence such as (15) below displays the same distributivity effect as (5), that can also be achieved by coordination as in (16).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="17">  (15) All boys followed Mary.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="18"> (16) John and Bill followed Mary.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="19">  Tile test sentences for verbs can also be used for adjectives, if they are used predicatively. An example is (17), where black is shown to have different readings when used with a concrete object and with humour.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="20"> (17) Her dress is black, and so is her hun~lour. null For gradable adjectives, a comparison is a basis for constructing a test sentence. Although (17) can be used humoristica.lly, (118) below, illustrating the ambiguity of fair, ca:n hardly be interpreted.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="21"> (18) Her hair is as fair as the salary she pa~ys her employees.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="22"> In general it seems that for gradable adjectives comparison provokes stronger judgements than anaphoric reference by so. In some cases, howew,,r, one of the senses cannot be used predicatively, and neither of the two processes can be used. An empty anaphor sometimes provides a solution, as in (19), where economic is shown to be ambiguous between the senses relati~g to the economy and not wasteful.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="23"> (19) For Inany years, he produced economic theories ~nd # cars.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="24"> In sorne languages, there is a lexical anaphor that requires an adjective as its antecedent, e.g. dito in Dutch, as illustrated in (20).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="25"> (20) Bij hun gouden bruiloft kregen ze een dito horloge.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="26"> (Litt.) 'At their golden wedding got they a # watch' Among the remaining problems is the comparison of two senses with big syntactic differences. All test sentences have to be syntactically correct, and syntax does not allow e.g. co-ordination of a noun and a verb in corresponding positions, tn such cases, tile semantic part of testing the senses is never a.rrived at.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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