Most schools of linguistics have their foundations in a study of the syntax and semantics of individual sentences. Cognitive linguistics is to some extent no exception: while it has always devoted considerable attention to the conceptual aspects of linguistic meaning and to the study of language in use, the focus of research has still traditionally been on single sentences or propositions rathe...

We present an implementation of a discourse parsing system for a lexicalized TreeAjoining Grammar for discourse, specifying the integration of sentence and discourse level processing. Our system is based on the assumption that the compositional aspects of semantics at the discourse-level parallel those at the sentence-level. This coupling is achieved by factoring away inferential semantics and ...

We present an implementation of a discourse parsing system for a lexicalized Tree-Ajoining Grammar for discourse, specifying the integration of sentence and discourse level processing. Our system is based on the assumption that the compositional aspects of semantics at the discourse-level parallel those at the sentence-level. This coupling is achieved by factoring away inferential semantics and...

To the degree that citizens have participated in, or derived benefits from, social institutions that have helped cause serious, life-threatening, or rights-threatening environmental injustice (EIJ), this article argues that they have duties either to stop their participation in these institutions or to compensate for it by helping to reform them. (EIJ occurs whenever children, poor people, mino...

We present an implementation of a discourse parsing system for a lexicalized Tree-Ajoining Grammar for discourse, specifying the integration of sentence and discourse level processing. Our system is based on the assumption that the compositional aspects of semantics at the discourse-level parallel those at the sentence-level. This coupling is achieved by factoring away inferential semantics and...

Since 2010, the international health community has placed a greater focus on reducing incidence and mortality rates due to non-communicable diseases, including cancer. Among women, breast cancer is the most common worldwide and therefore of great concern. While efforts to reduce and treat breast cancer are prevalent in Western countries, it is in developing countries where more than two-thirds ...

Two competing theories of processing of conditionals (if-then) were tested. Syntactic theories posit that people only draw inferences conforming to the logically valid modus ponens (MP) schema. Mental models theories predict that people draw MP and invalid affirming-the-consequent (AC) inferences. Three experiments tested these predictions. Participants read short stories that conformed to eith...

Current theories of communication yield predictions about the expression choice of overhearers as well as primary discourse participants. We discuss three such theories and evaluate them with reference to new data on object naming elicited through a confederate priming paradigm. Our results show that participants adopt primed referring expressions if they are highly involved in the task, but me...

Introduction My research project consists of building a story generator which will explore the use of reader modelling for plot generation. The project will make use of an emerging body of work at the intersection of literature and psychology that investigates reader engagement. Although there are existing systems that use formal reader models in a narrative generation context, most of them are...