Inheritance, Defaults and the Lexicon [Paperback]

This collection describes techniques of lexical representation within a unification-based framework.The lexicon is now a major focus of research in computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP). This collection describes techniques of lexical representation within a unification-based framework and their linguistic application, concentrating on the issue of structuring the lexicon using inheritance and defaults.The lexicon is now a major focus of research in computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP). This collection describes techniques of lexical representation within a unification-based framework and their linguistic application, concentrating on the issue of structuring the lexicon using inheritance and defaults.Inheritance has been used in AI knowledge representation for many years. Until recently, however, it had not been much exploited in linguistic representation. This collection describes how the lexicon may be structured using inheritance. The papers are mostly formal in orientation, mainly concentrating on unification-based systems (which nowadays form the basis for most theoretically motivated work on NLP, and for current linguistic theories such as HPSG) and discuss syntax and morphology as well as lexical semantics. The formalization of default inheritance, in particular, is discussed in detail, and linked with the AI literature.Contributors; 1. Introduction Ted Briscoe; 2. Skeptical and credulous default unification with applications to templates and inheritance Bob Carpenter; 3. Prioritised multiple inheritance in DATR Roger Evans, Gerald Gazdar and Lionel Moser; 4. Some reflections on the conversion of the TIC lexicon into DATR Lynne J. Cahill; 5. Norms or inference tickets? a frontal collision between intuitions Michael Morreau; 6. Issues in the design of a language for representing linguistic information based on inheritance and feature structures R?mi Zajac; 7. Feature-based inheritance networks for compul…