Challenging the Principle of Compositionality in Interpreting Natural Language Texts - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2005

Challenging the Principle of Compositionality in Interpreting Natural Language Texts

Résumé

The main assumption of many contemporary semantic theories, from Montague grammars to the most recent papers in journals of linguistics semantics, is and remains the principle of compositionality. It is also adopted by more computation-oriented traditions (Artificial Intelligence or Natural Language Processing - henceforth, NLP). Although its adequacy to ”real” language clearly raises several difficulties, it is almost never challenged and the presuppositions on which it relies are seldom questioned. Rather than proposing some more arrangements to overcome some of its drawbacks, our point, in this paper, will actually consist in a more radical critique which addresses first the very notion of meaning. For us, a semantic theory should not focus on finding ”the meaning of a complex expression” but rather on drawing adequate inferences. This shift of focus allows us to present an approach which fulfills the tasks that the notion of meaning is supposed to carry out, without an explicit (and compositional) construction of the meaning of parts and wholes.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
compoFinale.pdf (112.58 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Loading...

Dates et versions

hal-00084948 , version 1 (11-07-2006)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-00084948 , version 1

Citer

Françoise Gayral, Daniel Kayser, François Lévy. Challenging the Principle of Compositionality in Interpreting Natural Language Texts. E. Machery, M. Werning, G. Schurz, eds. the compositionality of meaning and content, vol II,, ontos verlag, pp.83--105, 2005, applications to Linguistics, Psychology and neuroscience. ⟨hal-00084948⟩
257 Consultations
1501 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More