DOCUMENT RESUME
    ED 055 472                                            FL 002 344
    AUTHOR           Simmons, R. F.                              English
    TITLE            Some Semantic Structures for Representing
                     Meanings.
     INSTITUTION     Texas Univ., Austin.
     SPONS AGENCY    National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C.
     REPORT NO       TR-NL-1
     PUB DATE        Nov 70
    NOTE             45p.
    EDRS PRICE       MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29                             Computer
     DESCRIPTORS     Case (Grammar); *Computational Linguistics;
                     Assisted Instruction; Deep Structure; *English;
                     *Language Research; Morphology (Languages);
                     Phonology; *Semantics; Sentences; Structural
                     Analysis; Surface Structure; *Syntax; Transformation
                     Generative Grammar; Transformations (Languaue)
     ABSTRACT        This paper defines the structure of a semantic
     network for use in representing discourse and lexical meanings. The
     structure is designed to represent underlying semantic meanings that,
     with a lexicon and a grammar, can generate natural-language sentences
     in a linguistically justi_fiable manner. The semantics of natural
     English can be defined as a system of conditions and transformations
     applied to syntactic coastituents to map them into semantic
     structures. A semantic structure for a statement is definz,d as a
     system of unambiguous representations of meaning interconnected by
     defined logical relatioas. The author feels that a semantic
     representation should probably be completely free of its
     natural-language representation. The correspondence between semantic
     structure and natural-language representation should reside wholly in
     the grammar and the lexicon. Specific details and examples of the
     semantic network operation are described. Illustrations of lexical
     structures are provided, and references are included. For additional
     information, see FL 002 345. (Author/VM)
         (NJ
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                                     SOME SEMANTIC STRUCTURES FOR REPRESENTING
                                                    ENGLISH MEANINGS
                                               TECHNICAL REPORT NO. NL-1
                                                     R. F. Simmons
                                                       November 1970
                            NATURAL LANGUAGE RESEARCH FOR COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
                                                       Supported By:
                                            THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
                                                      Grant GJ 509 X
                                             Department of Computer Sciences
                                                            and
                                        Computer-Assisted Instruction Laboratory
                                                 The University of Texas
                                                      Austin, Texas
                                         ABSTRACT
                    A structure for semantic representation of English discourse
          and lexicon is described with some examples of semantic content repre-
          sentation for word, phrase, and discourse meanings.   The semantic net-
          works used are derived from those suggested earlier by Quinian, while
          the conventions for representing content are based partly on Fillmore's
          ideas of deep case structure.  Attribute-value lists are shown to be a
          suitable linear notation for computational representation of networks.
          It is argued that the semantic network representation is a more con-
          venient form for representing discourse meanings than the predicate
           calculus.
                                      ACKNOWLEDGWENTS
                     I am gratefill to Marianne Celce, for helping mo to understand
           better various forms of deep semantic structure, and to numerous other
           colleagues and students who continually tutor me in the finer points of
           the several disciplines of linguistics, psychology, logic, mathematics,
           and computer science, all of which seem to be deeply involved in compu-
           tational linguistics.
                                                            RFS
                              SOME SEMANTIC STRUCTURES FOR REPRESENTING
                                          ENGLISH MEANINGS
                                             R. F. Simmons
                                           I.  Introduction
                    The spoken or written representation of a discourse in
               English haE the explicit structure of a string.     That is, the
                discourse is a sequence of spoken or written symbols -- each
                symbol is followed by another symbol (including stops).
               Underlyiug this simple string structure however, there is a
                considerable depth of phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic
                and pragmatic structure that is implied by the sequence of choices
                of symbols.
                     More than half a century of linguistic study has developed
                a fair understanding of how to derive and represent phonemic,
                morphemic and syntactic structures implied by strings of natural
                language symbols -- not that there is complete agreement in the
                choice of any one system.   It is only in recent years, however,
                that the semantic structures of natural langusses have become
                an tmportant topic of linguistic consideration.    Definitions of
                semantic structly2es and means for deriving and representing them
                had a limited place in Chomsky's (1965) transformrAtional'theory,
                while in newer versions of the theory, (see Lakoff 1969) the
                underlying semantic structures of langUage became a basic
                component.