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CSLI Calendar, May 19, 3:29


       C S L I   C A L E N D A R   O F   P U B L I C   E V E N T S
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19 May 1988                        Stanford                    Vol. 3, No. 29
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     A weekly publication of The Center for the Study of Language and
     Information, Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
                              ____________
	     CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR THIS THURSDAY, 19 May 1988

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       Reading: "Even"
     Seminar Room  	by Paul Kay
			Discussion led by Mark Gawron
			(gawron@csli.stanford.edu)
			Abstract in last week's Calendar

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Cordura Hall	How Complex is the Mapping between Semantics and
     Conference Room	Syntax: Agents and Themes in Dutch
			Annie Zaenen
			(zaenen.pa@xerox.com)
			Abstract below
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall
                             --------------
	     CSLI ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT THURSDAY, 26 May 1988

   12 noon		TINLunch
     Ventura Hall       Reading: "The Algebra of Events"
     Seminar Room  	by Emmon Bach
			Discussion led by Bob Carpenter
			(carp@drifters.stanford.edu)
			Abstract below

   2:15 p.m.		CSLI Seminar
     Cordura Hall	A Grammar for Tarski's World
     Conference Room	Lauri Karttunen
			(karttunen.pa@xerox.com)
			Abstract below
			
   3:30 p.m.		Tea
     Ventura Hall

			     --------------
			THIS WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
	How Complex is the Mapping between Semantics and Syntax:
		       Agents and Themes in Dutch
			      Annie Zaenen
			  (zaenen.pa@xerox.com)
				 May 19

   Recently syntacticians have turned their attention again to the
   correlations between the meaning of words and their syntactic
   properties. A popular view is that the semantics of a verb is the
   basis for a classification of its arguments into thematic roles and
   that a hierarchy of these roles determines the grammatical realization
   of these arguments (as subjects, objects, etc). I will discuss some
   data from Dutch that show that this picture has to be complicated in a
   least two ways. First, one has to assume broader equivalence classes
   that mediate between the semantically defined thematic roles and the
   grammatical ones. Second, some of the phenomena that have been
   analyzed in terms of thematic roles (or similar lexical notions that
   can be thought of as representations of lexical aspect (i.e.,
   Aktionsart), need to be analyzed as conditioned by sentence aspect.

			     --------------
			NEXT WEEK'S CSLI TINLUNCH
		    Reading: "The Algebra of Events"
			      by Emmon Bach
		     Discussion led by Bob Carpenter
		      (carp@drifters.stanford.edu)
				 May 26

   Emmon Bach claims that the "basic aim of this paper is to try and
   elucidate this proportion: events:processes :: things:stuff."  He
   exploits the structural parallels between the domain of individuals
   and events to propose a semantics for verbal aspect, and in particular
   the progressive, identical to Godehard Link's semantics for mass and
   count nominals.
      We'll concentrate on the "Puzzles and Problems" section, which
   deals with three unresolved issues.  The first is the general
   mechanism of languages for "packaging" objects into new objects and
   "grinding" existing objects into their constituents.  The second deals
   with the relation between the partitive and the progressive and their
   admission of real, but incomplete complements as in "part of a bridge"
   and "was building a bridge" where the bridge was never built.  The
   final puzzle is the key, where the general ontological question of
   object individuation and its relation to the attunement of agents is
   brought out of the closet.
      Time permitting, we can discuss some comments of Fred Landman's (in
   "Groups," UMass ms) pertaining to the general topic of collectivity
   and individuation, which is closely related to the notions of "actual"
   situation in situation semantics.

			     --------------
			NEXT WEEK'S CSLI SEMINAR
		      A Grammar for Tarski's World
			     Lauri Karttunen
			(karttunen.pa@xerox.com)
				 May 26

   Tarski's World is an educational Macintosh game for teaching
   first-order logic, designed by Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy.  To
   play the game, the student creates a world of geometric objects.  A
   display window presents a 3-d view of the world.  In a text window,
   the student can type a formula of first-order logic and have it
   verified with respect to the world.
      This summer, we are planning to augment Tarski's World with a
   natural-language interface.  The new version of the program will also
   translate between English and first-order logic.  For example, it will
   be able to tell the student that "Every cube is not small" means
   either "Ax (cube(x) -> ~small(x))" or "~Ax (cube(x) -> small(x))" and
   it can also translate logical formulas to English.
      The grammar for Tarski's World is a categorial unification grammar
   in the style of my "Radical Lexicalism" paper.  A novel aspect of the
   grammar is that translations of English words are layered structures.
   When phrases are combined by function application, the functor phrase
   selects the relevant layer of its and its argument's translations to
   produce an appropriate translation for the result.  One advantage of
   this approach is that a single entry for "is" covers all the uses of
   the copula and one entry for a passive verb form gives the correct
   translation for both agentless passives and full passives.