Replicating Quantified Noun Phrases in Database Semantics

Predicate calculus treats determiner-noun sequences like the man, every man, or several men as ‘quantified noun phrases.’ This analysis in terms of quantifiers, variables, and connectives creates a major structural difference compared to the handling of proper names. The modeling of natural language communication in database semantic (DBS), in contrast, treats the functorargument structure as primary, regardless of whether an argument is of the sign type symbol (determiner-noun sequence), name, or indexical (pronoun). In this paper, the meanings carried by different determiners are reanalyzed as controlling the internal matching between nominal symbols and individuals, or sets of individuals, at the level of context.