This dissertation deals with the robustness problem of deep linguistic processing. Hand-crafted deep linguistic grammars provide precise modeling of human languages, but are deficient in their capability of handling ill-formed or extra-grammatical inputs. In this dissertation, we argue that with a series of robust processing techniques, improved coverage can be achieved without sacrificing effi...

Plural definite descriptions (e.g. the things on the plate) and free relative clauses (e.g. what is on the plate) have been argued to share the same semantic properties, despite their syntactic differences: both are non-quantificational expressions referring to the maximal element of a given set (e.g. the set of things on the plate). Experimental support to this semantic analysis is provided by...

The extensive theory that exists on ~ca, the set of uitrafilters ov-.r the integers, suggests an analogous study of the family of g-complete ultrafih~rs over a measurable cardinal g > w. This paper is devoted to such a study, with emphasis on those aspects which make the uncountable case interesting and distinctive. Section 1 is a preliminary section, recapitulating some knov, n concepts and re...

This  paper  focuses  on  some  pragmatic  expressions  that  are  characteristic  of  informal  spoken English, their possible equivalents in some other languages, and their use by EFL learners from different  backgrounds.  These  expressions,  called  general  extenders  (e.g.  and  stuff,  or something), are shown to be different from discourse markers and to exhibit variation in form, funct...

therefore, these categories become more abstract with them. Another important part of the process of grammatical development is the construction of paradigmatic categories such as noun and verb. Unlike syntactic roles, paradigmatic categories are not explicitly marked in language. That is, whereas such things as agent/subject are symbolically indicated by word order or grammatical morphology in...

The subject of this research is linguistic (or: language) audit. The term is new and not being widely used so far. Linguistic audit, in particular, is offered as a service of linguistic-consulting agencies’ activities. Modern linguistic consulting, according to the author, is a form of stimulating theoretical and practical development of linguistic ecology, a new branch of applied linguistics, ...

When searching for multiple words in a corpus database, we all have encountered the problem of not coming up with ‘the right thing’. Indeed, very often the results produced by the computer do not meet the analysis we would have produced as humans. In a text, in order to understand it correctly, we rely not only on the semantic content of the words but also on more grammatical means, which provi...

This thesis develops a theoretical formalism of formal semantics of natural language in the spirit of Montague semantics. The developed framework satisfies the principle of compositionality in a simple and elegant way, by being as parsimonious as possible: completely new formalisms or extensions of existing formalisms with even more complex constructions to fit particular linguistic phenomena h...