Jamie Y. Findlay

Also published as: Jamie Y. Findlay


2023

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Formal Semantics for Dependency Grammar
Dag T. T. Haug | Jamie Y. Findlay
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, GURT/SyntaxFest 2023)

In this paper, we provide an explicit interface to formal semantics for Dependency Grammar, based on Glue Semantics. Glue Semantics has mostly been developed in the context of Lexical Functional Grammar, which shares two crucial assumptions with Dependency Grammar: lexical integrity and allowance of nonbinary-branching syntactic structure. We show how Glue can be adapted to the Dependency Grammar setting and provide sample semantic analyses of quantifier scope, control infinitives and relative clauses.

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Rule-based semantic interpretation for Universal Dependencies
Jamie Y. Findlay | Saeedeh Salimifar | Ahmet Yıldırım | Dag T. T. Haug
Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW, GURT/SyntaxFest 2023)

In this paper, we present a system for generating semantic representations from Universal Dependencies syntactic parses. The foundation of our pipeline is a rule-based interpretation system, designed to be as universal as possible, which produces the correct semantic structure; the content of this structure can then be filled in by additional (sometimes language-specific) post-processing. The rules which generate semantic resources rely as far as possible on the UD parse alone, so that they can apply to any language for which such a parse can be given (a much larger number than the number of languages for which detailed semantically annotated corpora are available). We discuss our general approach, and highlight areas where the UD annotation scheme makes semantic interpretation less straightforward. We compare our results with the Parallel Meaning Bank, and show that when it comes to modelling semantic structure, our approach shows potential, but also discuss some areas for expansion.

2021

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How useful are Enhanced Universal Dependencies for semantic interpretation?
Jamie Y. Findlay | Dag T. T. Haug
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Dependency Linguistics (Depling, SyntaxFest 2021)

2017

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Multiword expressions and lexicalism: the view from LFG
Jamie Y. Findlay
Proceedings of the 13th Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2017)

Multiword expressions (MWEs) pose a problem for lexicalist theories like Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), since they are prima facie counterexamples to a strong form of the lexical integrity principle, which entails that a lexical item can only be realised as a single, syntactically atomic word. In this paper, I demonstrate some of the problems facing any strongly lexicalist account of MWEs, and argue that the lexical integrity principle must be weakened. I conclude by sketching a formalism which integrates a Tree Adjoining Grammar into the LFG architecture, taking advantage of this relaxation.