Prevailing approaches do not have a computational lexicon

[Mark Johnson]

Hi Ash and Carl,

Ash Asudeh wrote:

>....
>
>The use of linear logic would also give a handle on the distinction
>between features that are "checked" and erased and those that are
>"checked" but persist. [ technical details removed ... ]
>
Yes, exactly!  Dick Oehrle and Michael Moortgat have done very
interesting work on systems which contain several different types of
"resource management"; i.e., in terms of the discussion here, some
features cancel, and others do not.

>
>
Carl Pollard wrote:

>...
>
>Are you referring here to examples of syncretism (or neutrality, or
>underspecification, as opposed to ambiguity) like the celebrated
>
>    Er findet und hilft Frauen
>    he finds  and helps women-ACC/DAT
>
>If so, what would it mean (in your terms) to analyze this in terms
>of what you called feature cancellation?
>
Yes -- you know about the 1995 ACL paper that Sam Bayer and I wrote (you
can get it from my Web page), and Sam's Language paper a year or so
later.  My 1999 JoLLI paper and the 1999 paper in Mary's collection on
LFG and linear logic show how these analyses can be incorporated into a
resource sensitive version of LFG, and discusses phenomena such as
quirky case marking, etc.

>... Then the choice becomes one between
>resource sensitive type logic and traditional type logic. Or, to put
>it another way, the question is whether the (intuitionistic) logic of
>syntactic types has structural rules. Mainstream type-logical grammar
>says no. My current work explores the consequences of answering yes. ...
>
>... The resource sensitivity arises,
>therefore, not in the syntax but in the syntax-prosody interface. (To
>put it categorically: it is not that syntax is monoidal-closed, but
>just that prosody is a monoid.)
>
>
That's a very interesting idea.  Given this set-up, can you predict what
aspects of grammar will show resource sensitivity and which ones won't?

Sorry to keep bringing this back to LFG all the time, but it would be
very interesting if it were possible to show that resource sensitivity
is natural and expected at the level of semantic interpretation, but not
expected at the c-structure and f-structure levels.

Best,

Mark

>
>