What are meaning representations?

Formal structures to capture the meaning of linguistic expressions.

What is semantic parsing or semantic analysis?

The process by which meaning representations are created and assigned to linguistic inputs.

What is computational semantics?

The entire enterprise of designing meaning representations and associated semantic parsers.

Give examples of meaning representations?

  1. First order logic
  2. Abstract meaning representation
  3. Slot-filler representation

What are the computational desiderata for representations?

  1. Verifiability
  2. Unambiguous representations
  3. Canonical form
  4. Inference and variables
  5. Expressiveness

What does the vocabulary of meaning representation consist of?

  1. Non-logical vocabulary: open-ended set of names for the objects, properties, and relations that make up the world we are trying to represent.
  2. Logical vocabulary: closet set of symbols, operators, quantifiers, links, etc. that provide the formal means for composing expressions.

What are the objects, properties, and relations of a domain?

  1. Objects denote elements of the domain
  2. Properties denote sets of elements of the domain
  3. Relations denote sets of tuples of elements of the domain

What is a feature used by human languages to convey meaning?

Predicate-argument structure

What is First-Order Logic?

First-Order Logic is a well-understood, computationally tractable meaning representation language that offers much of what is needed in a meaning representation language. It can capture states, events, semantic networks, and frames.

What is Web Ontology Language (OWL)?

OWL is description logic, which are subsets of the full First-Order Logic. It is used in the specification of the semantic web.