Query: coordination in Categorial Grammar

Glyn Morrill morrill at lsi.upc.es
Mon Oct 14 09:14:09 UTC 2002


>
> Hello All,
>
> Yes, I know this isn't a Categorial Grammar list, but I think several
> people here are interested enough and know enough to answer the following
> question.
>
> How does CG (either Combinatory CG or Type-Logical Grammar) deal with
> non-binary coordination like "X, Y and Z"?
>
> >From reading up on coordination in Steedman's work and Carpenter's book,
> it seems that the way it is done is to first combine Y and Z and then
> combine this with X (or start with X, this isn't important).
>
> Doesn't this assume that there has to be a coordinator in "X, Y and z"
> other than the overt "and" (e.g., either a null coordiantor, or something
> corresponding to the comma)?
>
> Thanks,
> Ash
>

Hello Ash and All,

In type logical grammar you can try to tackle this by a unary
operator which is interpreted as Kleene plus. So a coordinator
could be

	(forall X)((X+\X)/X)

The operator is kind of reminiscent of ! in linear logic; perhaps
roughly speaking + is to expansion as ! is to contraction, if
we orient ourselves to structural rules.

I think I talk about this way of treating iterated coordination in
my book.

Best,

-- Glyn



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