Unified Semantics Research Articles

The semantics of questions.

Pinning down the semantics of questions poses a challenge for the study of meaning. Unlike most declarative statements, questions cannot be assigned a truth value. They do not assert information about the world that can be easily verified as true or false, or accepted or rejected. Instead, their function as a speech act is to interrogate, to seek information about the world. Thus a truth-conditional approach to the semantics of questions runs into a dead end. We must therefore evaluate the semantics of questions in terms of the propositions that serve as their answers. But here, a number of questions arise that shape our investigation. What counts as a suitable answer, in general or in a given discourse context? How does the variability of question types within and across the world's languages influence our theory of a unified semantics of questions? When questions are embedded under a matrix verb like "know," which takes the question as a sentential complement, how does the semantics of questions feed into the assessment of the proposition expressed by this declarative utterance? What must the subject of the sentence know? Should they be required to know or list an exhaustive list of true answers or one true answer, should they know of the false answers that they are false? What answers are licensed? How can questions reflect a bias on the part of the speaker? These issues lie at the heart of an investigation of the semantics of questions. This article is characterized under: Linguistics > Linguistic Theory Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain.

Topological semantics for lumped parameter systems modeling

Behaviors of many engineering systems are described by lumped parameter models that encapsulate the spatially distributed nature of the system into networks of lumped elements; the dynamics of such a network is governed by a system of ordinary differential and algebraic equations. Languages and simulation tools for modeling such systems differ in syntax, informal semantics, and in the methods by which such systems of equations are generated and simulated, leading to numerous interoperability challenges. Logical extensions of SysML aim specifically at unifying a subset of the underlying concepts in such languages.We propose to unify semantics of all such systems using standard notions from algebraic topology. In particular, Tonti diagrams classify all physical theories in terms of physical laws (topological and constitutive) defined over a pair of dual cochain complexes and may be used to describe different types of lumped parameter systems. We show that all possible methods for generating the corresponding state equations within each physical domain correspond to paths over Tonti diagrams. We further propose a generalization of Tonti diagram that captures the behavior and supports canonical generation of state equations for multi-domain lumped parameter systems.The unified semantics provides a basis for greater interoperability in systems modeling, supporting automated translation, integration, reuse, and numerical simulation of models created in different authoring systems and applications. Notably, the proposed algebraic topological semantics is also compatible with spatially and temporally distributed models that are at the core of modern CAD and CAE systems.

Semantic unification modulates N400 and BOLD signal change in the brain: A simultaneous EEG-fMRI study

Abstract Semantic unification during sentence comprehension has been associated with amplitude change of the N400 in event-related potential (ERP) studies, and activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. However, the specificity of this activation to semantic unification remains unknown. To more closely examine the brain processes involved in semantic unification, we employed simultaneous EEG-fMRI to time-lock the semantic unification related N400 change, and integrated trial-by-trial variation in both N400 and BOLD change beyond the condition-level BOLD change difference measured in traditional fMRI analyses. Participants read sentences in which semantic unification load was parametrically manipulated by varying cloze probability. Separately, ERP and fMRI results replicated previous findings, in that semantic unification load parametrically modulated the amplitude of N400 and cortical activation. Integrated EEG-fMRI analyses revealed a different pattern in which functional activity in the left IFG and bilateral supramarginal gyrus (SMG) was associated with N400 amplitude, with the left IFG activation and bilateral SMG activation being selective to the condition-level and trial-level of semantic unification load, respectively. By employing the EEG-fMRI integrated analyses, this study among the first sheds light on how to integrate trial-level variation in language comprehension.

Triviality and interrogative embedding: context sensitivity, factivity, and neg-raising

Why do predicates like know embed both declarative and interrogative clauses, whereas closely related ones like believe only embed the former? The standard approach following Grimshaw (Linguist Inq 10:279–326, 1979) to this issue has been to specify lexically for each predicate which type of complement clause it can combine with. This view is challenged by predicates such as be certain, which embed interrogative clauses only in certain contexts. To deal with this issue, this paper proposes (i) a novel, unified semantics for declarative and interrogative embedding and (ii) a theory where embedding is constrained by semantic considerations. The reason for the apparent unembeddability of an interrogative clause under a given predicate is the resulting trivial meaning of the sentence. Such triviality manifests itself in unacceptability. Crucially, it is affected by both the lexical meaning of the predicate and the polarity of the sentence as a whole.

A Framework for Halal Knowledge Metadata Representations

End users and consumers of halal industry are facing difficulties in finding verified halal information. This occurred due to information that is stored in silos at every point of activity for every process chain, employing different structures and models, creating an issue of information verification. Integration of multiple information systems generally aims at combining selected systems so that information can be easily retrieved and manage by users. A proposed five components metadata representation development methodology is presented in this paper so that they form a unified new whole and give users the illusion of interacting with one single information system, therefore, data can be represented using the same abstraction principles (unified global data model and unified semantics) without any physical restructuring.

Representing glycophenotypes: semantic unification of glycobiology resources for disease discovery

Representing glycophenotypes: semantic unification of glycobiology resources for disease discovery

Dual quantum B-algebras

Quantum B-algebras as implicational subreducts of quantales were introduced by Rump and Yang. They cover the majority of implicational algebras and provide a unified semantics for a wide class of algebraic logics. Some concepts for quantales survive in the framework of quantum B-algebras. In this paper, we first introduce the concept of dual quantum B-algebras (Girard quantum B-algebras). Next, we prove that every dual quantum B-algebra is a residuated poset and that complete dual quantum B-algebras and dual quantales are equivalent to each other. Further, we consider the construction of Girard quantum B-algebras from dual quantum B-algebras.

Representing glycophenotypes: semantic unification of glycobiology resources for disease discovery.

While abnormalities related to carbohydrates (glycans) are frequent for patients with rare and undiagnosed diseases as well as in many common diseases, these glycan-related phenotypes (glycophenotypes) are not well represented in knowledge bases (KBs). If glycan-related diseases were more robustly represented and curated with glycophenotypes, these could be used for molecular phenotyping to help to realize the goals of precision medicine. Diagnosis of rare diseases by computational cross-species comparison of genotype–phenotype data has been facilitated by leveraging ontological representations of clinical phenotypes, using Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO), and model organism ontologies such as Mammalian Phenotype Ontology (MP) in the context of the Monarch Initiative. In this article, we discuss the importance and complexity of glycobiology and review the structure of glycan-related content from existing KBs and biological ontologies. We show how semantically structuring knowledge about the annotation of glycophenotypes could enhance disease diagnosis, and propose a solution to integrate glycophenotypes and related diseases into the Unified Phenotype Ontology (uPheno), HPO, Monarch and other KBs. We encourage the community to practice good identifier hygiene for glycans in support of semantic analysis, and clinicians to add glycomics to their diagnostic analyses of rare diseases.

Domains and CauseP in a unified semantics of Chinese adverbial ziji ‘self’

A unified semantics of Chinese adverbial ziji ‘self’ is proposed for its three exclusive readings. In the proposal, adverbial ziji is a focused item, evoking alternatives for consideration by its focus semantic value. Depending on domain variation and different syntactic adjoining positions, ziji shows various surface readings, though the availability of readings is affected by context, world knowledge, and a relation presupposition triggered by ziji. The proposed mechanism suggests the following. First, CauseP for internal causation cannot be introduced by ziji, but is projected more prevalently than commonly assumed. Second, CauseP should be projected in anticausatives. If this analysis is on the right track, it will give us a new perspective of intensifiers and the projection of CauseP, and it will also help us advance the study of anticausatives.

Concurrent emotional response and semantic unification: An event-related potential study.

Using event-related potentials, in this study we examined how implied emotion is derived from sentences. In the same sentential context, different emotionally neutral words rendered the whole sentence emotionally neutral and semantically congruent, emotionally negative and semantically congruent, or emotionally neutral and semantically incongruent. Relative to the words in the neutral-congruent condition, the words in the neutral-incongruent condition elicited a larger N400, indicating increased semantic processing, whereas the words in the negative-congruent condition elicited a long-lasting positivity between 300 and 1,000 ms, indicating an emotional response. The overlapping time windows of semantic processing and the emotional response suggest that the construction of emotional meaning operates concurrently with semantic unification. The results indicate that the implied emotional processing of sentences may be a result of unification operations but does not necessarily involve causal appraisal of a sentence's mental representation.

The expression of exhaustivity and scalarity in Burmese

The Burmese particle hma expresses exhaustivity in some contexts but a scalar, even-like meaning in other contexts. We detail the distribution of hma and its meaning and develop a unified semantics. Hma is a not-at-issue scalar exhaustive, similar to the semantics proposed for English it-clefts in Velleman, Beaver, Destruel, Bumford, Onea & Coppock 2012. When hma takes wide scope, it leads to an exhaustive, cleft interpretation which is not scale-sensitive. When hma takes scope under negation, the resulting meaning will have a scale-sensitive felicity condition. We also discuss the semantics of the sentence-final mood marker dar, which we propose is a marker of propositional clefts (Sheil 2016), and its apparent role in the determination of the scope of hma.

On the injective hulls of quantum B-algebras

Quantum B-algebras as implicational subreducts of quantales were introduced by Rump and Yang, which cover the majority of implicational algebras and provide a unified semantics for non-commutative algebraic logic. Due to the adjunction between multiplication and its residuals, they can be regarded as the implicational counterpart of partially ordered semigroups. By means of the injective hulls (envelopes) of quantum B-algebras, Rump gave the injective hulls of partially ordered semigroups. In this paper, one part of our work is to give new examples of quantum B-algebras where the lower sets do not form a quantale. Another part of our work is to consider the inverse problem of Rump's way, that is, we can also give the injective hulls of quantum B-algebras in terms of the injective hulls of partially ordered semigroups.

A unified semantics for the Japanese Q-particle <i>ka</i> in indefinites, questions and disjunctions

This paper provides a compositional semantics for the Japanese Q-particle ka that properly accounts for its use in questions, indefinites and disjunctions in a unified fashion. Adopting the two-tier alternative semantics (Rooth 1985; Beck 2006), I will propose that the role of the ka-particle is always to project a set of alternatives introduced by the wh-item in the alternative-semantic dimension to the ordinary-semantic dimension (Kotek 2014). Unlike in previous analyses, I will adopt this semantics for the Q-particle not only for its clause-final use, but also for clause-internal use. Combining this with the cross-categorial existential closure, the analysis accounts for how the interpretation of a ka-ending phrase is conditioned by its syntactic environments. This mechanism enables an account of the previously unexplained parallelism between wh+ka and ka-disjunctions in their variability in interpretations.

Coordination and focus particles (re?)united

The aim of this paper is to sketch a unified semantics for coordination markers and focus particles. The main empirical motivation is found in the existence of some ‘multipractic’ particles in Serbian, ni and i, which serve as coordination markers, additive focus particles and scalar focus particles. A disjunction-based analysis can capture the polarity-sensitive behavior of ni, whereas i relies on a conjunction semantics. An approach that involves the exhaustification of alternatives is a crucial ingredient. Nonetheless, two types of exhaustification should be allowed—one corresponding to ‘only’ and the other one to ‘even’.

Integration of Symbolic Execution into a Formal Abstract State Machines based Language

Hard real-time systems are embedded systems with a strong emphasis on the guaranty of safety-critical properties. In order to provide the necessary confidence level, with regard to the respect of functional and non-functional properties, a system analysis that accounts for all possible execution paths must be performed. Symbolic execution has been successfully used to explore and analyze reachable system states. In this paper, we formally define a symbolic execution semantics for an abstract state machine based model. The unification of the update semantics redefined in terms of symbolic moves, enable us to achieve reacher methods for path condition resolution and ultimately better scalability of the execution. The goal of this paper is to provide a formal ground for the integration of symbolic execution in existing timing analysis frameworks based on abstract state machines that will facilitate the computability of the analysis tools.

Aspectual triplets in Russian: semantic predictability and regularity

Russian verbs are considered to form aspectual pairs, perfective and imperfective. However, this system is complicated by the existence of so-called aspectual triplets, in which one perfective verb has two imperfective correlates (a primary imperfective and a secondary imperfective). This article offers new insights into the discussion of this controversial issue. While aspectual triplets have traditionally been treated as marginal, we present a systemic account of this phenomenon based on a corpus study of a comprehensive list of Russian aspectual triplets. In addition, contrary to some previous approaches, we propose unified semantics for the secondary imperfectives, namely, a telic process. We show that the meaning of a secondary imperfective is the result of interaction among the meaning of the prefix, the meaning of the verbal stem, and the general semantics of the secondary imperfective. We argue that the secondary imperfective is marginal if the semantics of the prefix or the semantics of the verbal stem are not compatible with the notion of result.

P.1.i.013 - Do obsessive compulsive disorder patients have difficulty forming an internal model of the completed state of an action?

This paper seeks to give a unified semantics for perfectivity in Russian within an explicitly decompositional syntactic framework. The aim is to account for the similar behaviour of the perfective class of predicates, despite the differences in the syntactic and semantic behaviour of the prefixes that attach to imperfective roots to give the perfective form. The first part of the paper gives the data that show that prefix types must be separated into at least two types (‘inner’ or ‘lexical’ prefixes vs. ‘outer’ or ‘superlexical’ prefixes) and that traditional notions of telicity and/or quantization are not uniformly correlated with linguistic perfectivity. The second half of the paper argues for an interpretation of perfectivity as corresponding to the ‘definiteness’ of the assertion time with respect to the run time of the event, in terms of a syntax–semantics account that makes use of both event and time variables.

A Unified Semantics for a Family of Modal Logics with Propositional Constants

This article concerns the metatheory of a class of modal logics whose language includes propositional constants of various kinds. The main novelties are the use of general frames with specific restrictions and the definition of the strict range of a formula. Many examples from the literature are treated within the framework provided and some traditional model-theoretic issues such as preservation results concerning the validity of formulas and definability results concerning frame properties are addressed.

Frequency-based Segregation of Syntactic and Semantic Unification during Online Sentence Level Language Comprehension.

During sentence level language comprehension, semantic and syntactic unification are functionally distinct operations. Nevertheless, both recruit roughly the same brain areas (spatially overlapping networks in the left frontotemporal cortex) and happen at the same time (in the first few hundred milliseconds after word onset). We tested the hypothesis that semantic and syntactic unification are segregated by means of neuronal synchronization of the functionally relevant networks in different frequency ranges: gamma (40 Hz and up) for semantic unification and lower beta (10-20 Hz) for syntactic unification. EEG power changes were quantified as participants read either correct sentences, syntactically correct though meaningless sentences (syntactic prose), or sentences that did not contain any syntactic structure (random word lists). Other sentences contained either a semantic anomaly or a syntactic violation at a critical word in the sentence. Larger EEG gamma-band power was observed for semantically coherent than for semantically anomalous sentences. Similarly, beta-band power was larger for syntactically correct sentences than for incorrect ones. These results confirm the existence of a functional dissociation in EEG oscillatory dynamics during sentence level language comprehension that is compatible with the notion of a frequency-based segregation of syntactic and semantic unification.

Behavioural and Electrophysiological effects related to semantic violations during braille reading

This study investigated the potential to detect event related potentials (ERPs) occurring in response to a specific task in braille reading. This would expand current methodologies for studying the cognitive processes underlying braille reading. An N400 effect paradigm was utilised, whereby proficient blind braille readers read congruent- and incongruent-ending braille sentences. Kinematic and electroencephalography (EEG) data were obtained simultaneously and synchronised. The ERPs differed between the incongruent and congruent sentences in a manner consistent with the N400 effect found with a previous sighted reading paradigm, demonstrating that ERPs can be obtained during braille reading. The frequency of finger reversals and the degree of intermittency in the finger velocity were significantly higher when reading incongruent versus congruent sentence endings. Both reversals and the potential N400 effect may reflect processes involved in semantic unification. These findings have significant implications for the modelling of braille reading. The refinement of the technique will enable other ERPs to be identified and related to behavioural responses, to further our understanding of the braille reading process.