Concerning Olga, the Beautiful Little Street Dancer (Adjectives as Higher-Order Polymorphic Functions)

TL;DR

This paper proposes a typed compositional semantics for nominal compounds, modeling adjectives as higher-order polymorphic functions within an ontology-based type system, explaining adjective ordering restrictions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel semantic framework where adjectives are higher-order polymorphic functions, linking language structure to an ontology-based type system.

Findings

Adjectives modeled as higher-order polymorphic functions.

Provides explanation for adjective ordering restrictions.

Aligns semantic modeling with commonsense ontology.

Abstract

In this paper we suggest a typed compositional seman-tics for nominal compounds of the form [Adj Noun] that models adjectives as higher-order polymorphic functions, and where types are assumed to represent concepts in an ontology that reflects our commonsense view of the world and the way we talk about it in or-dinary language. In addition to [Adj Noun] compounds our proposal seems also to suggest a plausible explana-tion for well known adjective ordering restrictions.