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Eventualities in a natural language understanding system

  • III. Sorts And Types In Natural Language (Understanding) Systems
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Sorts and Types in Artificial Intelligence

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 418))

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the discussion of suitable representations of eventualities in a formal language and of the possibilities to draw inferences from representations. We argue in favour of the treatment of eventualities as individuals, which are structured along different lines. When reifying eventualities, there are different possibilities of individualization. This is similarily true for the domain of objects. Thus we investigate these possibilities in parallel with objects, and obtain a rather symmetric structuring of the domain of individuals, i.e. a sort hierarchy which is sensible for different kinds of eventualities and objects respectively.

Next to this classification and the pure temporal ordering, there is another possibility of structuring: eventualities can be partitioned into subevents, and be grouped together to form episodes.

The representation of sets of eventualities is needed to deal with certain plural phenomena correctly. Normally this leads to the introduction of second order variables and, allowing quantification over such variables, to the extension of the language to one of second order type. However there is no complete calculus for second order logic. This is one of the reasons why we favour a lattice approach, which enables us to model sets as structured objects of first order type.

The discussion and integration of the different principles of structurization mentioned above will be the main focus of this paper.

The background of this paper is provided by the travelling scenario of the LILOG-project and the language L LILOG which is used in the LILOG-system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, Universität Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17

    Kurt Eberle

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  1. Kurt Eberle
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Karl Hans Bläsius Ulrich Hedtstück Claus-Rainer Rollinger

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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Eberle, K. (1990). Eventualities in a natural language understanding system. In: Bläsius, K.H., Hedtstück, U., Rollinger, CR. (eds) Sorts and Types in Artificial Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 418. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg . https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52337-6_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52337-6_26

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-52337-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46965-0

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