Type-theoretical natural language semantics: on the system F for meaning assembly

TL;DR

This paper advances a type-theoretical framework for natural language semantics using system F, incorporating lexical features like coercions and copredication, with practical linguistic applications.

Contribution

It introduces predefined types and coercive subtyping into the system F framework, enhancing natural language semantic modeling.

Findings

Effective modeling of coercions and copredication in natural language semantics

Introduction of predefined types and coercive subtyping improves expressiveness

Linguistic applications demonstrate practical utility of the framework

Abstract

This paper presents and extends our type theoretical framework for a compositional treatment of natural language semantics with some lexical features like coercions (e.g. of a town into a football club) and copredication (e.g. on a town as a set of people and as a location). The second order typed lambda calculus was shown to be a good framework, and here we discuss how to introduced predefined types and coercive subtyping which are much more natural than internally coded similar constructs. Linguistic applications of these new features are also exemplified.