Making Preferences More Active

The paper discusses the incorporation of richer semantic structures into the Preference Semantics system: they are called pseudo-texts and capture something of the information expressed in one type of frame proposed by Minsky (q.v.). However, they are in a format, and subject to rules of inference, consistent with earlier accounts of this system of language analysis and understanding. Their use is discussed in connection with the phenomenon of extended use: sentences where the semantic preferences are broken. It is argued that such situations are the norm and not the exception in normal language use, and that a language understanding system must give some general treatment of them. A notion of sense projection is proposed, leading on to an alteration of semantic formulas (word sense representations) in the face of unexpected context by drawing information from the pseudo texts. A possible implementation is described, based on a new semantic parser for the Preference Semantics system, which would cope with extended use by the methods suggested and answer questions about the process of analysis itself. It is argued that this would be a good context in which to place a language understander (rather than that of question-answering about a limited area of the real world, as is normal) and, moreover, that the sense projection mechanisms suggested would provide a test-bed on which the usefulness of frames for language understanding could be realistically assessed