Abstract
Knowledge representation systems aiming at full natural language understanding need to cover a wide range of semantic phenomena including lexical ambiguities, coreference, modalities, counterfactuals, and generic sentences. In order to achieve this goal, we argue for a multidimensional view on the representation of natural language semantics. The proposed approach, which has been successfully applied to various NLP tasks including text retrieval and question answering, tries to keep the balance between expressiveness and manageability by introducing separate semantic layers for capturing dimensions such as facticity, degree of generalization, and determination of reference. Layer specifications are also used to express the distinction between categorical and situational knowledge and the encapsulation of knowledge needed e.g. for a proper modeling of propositional attitudes. The paper describes the role of these classificational means for natural language understanding, knowledge representation, and reasoning, and exemplifies their use in NLP applications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
van Benthem, J., ter Meulen, A. (eds.): Handbook of Logic and Language. North-Holland, Amsterdam (1997)
Helbig, H.: Knowledge Representation and the Semantics of Natural Language. Springer, Berlin (2006)
Hartrumpf, S., Helbig, H., Osswald, R.: The semantically based computer lexicon HaGenLex – Structure and technological environment. Traitement automatique des langues 44(2), 81–105 (2003)
Hartrumpf, S.: Hybrid Disambiguation in Natural Language Analysis. Der Andere Verlag, Osnabrück, Germany (2003)
Hartrumpf, S.: Question answering using sentence parsing and semantic network matching. In: Peters, C., Clough, P., Gonzalo, J., Jones, G.J.F., Kluck, M., Magnini, B. (eds.) CLEF 2004. LNCS, vol. 3491, pp. 512–521. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Glöckner, I., Hartrumpf, S., Leveling, J.: Logical validation, answer merging and witness selection – a case study in multi-stream question answering. In: Proc. of RIAO 2007, Pittsburgh, PA (2007)
Leveling, J.: Formale Interpretation von Nutzeranfragen für natürlichsprachliche Interfaces zu Informationsangeboten im Internet. Der andere Verlag, Tönning (2006)
Hartrumpf, S., Helbig, H., Leveling, J., Osswald, R.: An architecture for controlling simple language in web pages. eMinds: Int. J. on Human-Computer Interaction 1(2), 93–112 (2006)
Gangemi, A., Guarino, N., Masolo, C., Oltramari, A., Schneider, L.: Sweetening ontologies with DOLCE. In: Gómez-Pérez, A., Benjamins, V.R. (eds.) EKAW 2002. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2473, pp. 166–181. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Baader, F., Horrocks, I., Sattler, U.: Description logics. In: Staab, S., Studer, R. (eds.) Handbook on Ontologies, pp. 3–28. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Brachman, R.: What IS-A is and isn’t: An analysis of taxonomic links in semantic networks. IEEE Computer 16, 30–36 (1983)
Artale, A., Franconi, E., Guarino, N., Pazzi, L.: Part-whole relations in object-centered systems: An overview. Data & Knowledge Engineering 20(3), 347–383 (1996)
Hobbs, J.: Ontological promiscuity. In: Proc. 23rd Annual Meeting ACL, pp. 61–69 (1985)
de Marneffe, M.C., MacCartney, B., Grenager, T., Cer, D., Rafferty, A., Manning, C.D.: Learning to distinguish valid textual entailments. In: Proc. of the 2nd Pascal RTE Challenge Workshop (2006)
Hickl, A., Bensley, J.: A discourse commitment-based framework for recognizing textual entailment. In: Proc. Workshop on Textual Entailment and Paraphrasing, Prague, ACL, pp. 171–176 (2007)
Bobrow, D., Condoravdi, C., Crouch, R., de Paiva, V., Kaplan, R., Karttunen, L., King, T., Zaenen, A.: A basic logic for textual inference. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Inference for Textual Question Answering, Pittsburgh, PA (2005)
Nairn, R., Condoravdi, C., Karttunen, L.: Computing relative polarity for textual inference. In: Proceedings of ICoS-5 (Inference in Computational Semantics), Buxton, UK (2006)
Klutsch, A.: Axiomatische Behandlung von Faktizität in MultiNet unter besonderer Berücksichtigung faktiver und implikativer Verben. Master’s thesis, FernUniversität Hagen (2007)
Glöckner, I., Hartrumpf, S., Helbig, H.: Automatic knowledge acquisition by semantic analysis and assimilation of textual information. In: Proc. of KONVENS 2006, Konstanz, Germany, pp. 36–43 (2006)
Glöckner, I., Helbig, H.: Wissensrepräsentation und Antwortfindung mit Mehrschichtigen Erweiterten Semantischen Netzen. KI 2, 49–55 (2005)
Kintzel, F.: Entwurf und Implementierung einer natürlichsprachlichen Generierungskomponente für mehrschichtige erweiterte semantische Netze. Master’s thesis, FernUniversität in Hagen (2007)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Helbig, H., Glöckner, I., Osswald, R. (2008). Layer Structures and Conceptual Hierarchies in Semantic Representations for NLP. In: Gelbukh, A. (eds) Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing. CICLing 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4919. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78135-6_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78135-6_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-78134-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-78135-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)