A grammar of spoken Chinese = 中國話的文法

In this paper, we outline a model of semantics that integrates aspects of discourse-sensitive logics with the compositional mechanisms available from lexically-driven semantic interpretation. Specifically, we concentrate on developing a composition logic required to properly model complex types within the Generative Lexicon (henceforth GL), for which we employ SDRT principles. As we are presently interested in the composition of information to construct logical forms, we will build on one standard way of arriving at such representations, the lambda calculus, in which functional types are exploited. We outline a new type calculus that captures one of the fundamental ideas of GL: providing a set of techniques governing type shifting possibilities for various lexical items so as to allow for the combination of lexical items in cases where there is an apparent type mismatch. These techniques themselves should follow from the structure of the lexicon and its underlying logic.

A Type Composition Logic for Generative Lexicon.

Comparative study of near synonyms is one of the most productive research paradigms in Chinese lexicography. Empirical studies to discriminate near synonyms are either introspection-based or corpus-based. Yet, due to the large quantity of data in a corpus, lexicological studies of Chinese rarely make full use of the corpus data. To solve this problem, Kilgarriff’s Word Sketch Engine is designed to automatically obtain grammatical and collocational relations of target words from corpora for researchers to further analyze them. Chinese Word Sketch (CWS), a language specific version of Word Sketch Engine, provides a tool to automatically identify grammatical information for Gigaword size corpora. Through a comparative study of the synonymous emotion words 愉快 yukuai 'pleasant' and 高興 gāoxing 'happy', this paper illustrates how CWS can distinguish them and help lexicographers to discriminate their subtle differences. In particular, it focuses on the context where these synonymous words can be used to define each other and context where they should be differentiated. It also discusses how to select information from CWS such that the information represented would be suitable for lexicographic studies. Through the study of near synonyms, we propose that Word Sketch Lexicography will lead the next generation of dictionaries.

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Word sketch lexicography: new perspectives on lexicographic studies of Chinese near synonyms

Natural and non-natural kinds have significant differences. This paper explores the subclasses of each kind and establishes the type system for event nouns. These nouns are divided into natural types, artifactual types, complex types (including natural complex types and artifactual complex types). This new classification not only enriches the Generative Lexicon theory, but also helps us to capture the properties of different types of event nouns.

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Type Construction of Event Nouns in Mandarin Chinese

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The development of noun-modifying constructions in child Mandarin

Event nouns can lexically encode eventive information. Recently these nouns have generated considerable scholarly interest. However, little research has been conducted in their morphological and syntactic structure, qualia modification, event representing feature, and information inheritance characteristics. This study has these main findings. 1) Morphologically, the modifier and the head is either free or bound morpheme. Syntactically the modifier is a nominal, adjectival, verbal or numeral morpheme, while the head is a nominal morpheme. 2) The modifier acts as a qualia role of the head. 3) All heads represent events, while the modifier is or is not an event. 4) The semantic information of a compound event noun can be inherited from the modifier or the head.

Compound Event Nouns of the â€˜Modifier-headâ€™ Type in Mandarin Chinese

MARVS is a theory for the representation of verbal semantics. This paper examines two types of modules and two sets of attributes, namely, role modules, event modules, role-internal attributes, and event-internal attributes, to account for the eventive and semantic factors of verbal polysemy. This study focuses on the polysemous verb chī. Based on MARVS, chī is divided into six senses. These senses are derived metonymically or metaphorically from the prototypical sense.

Sense Representation in MARVS: A Case Study on the Polysemy of chī

26th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, PACLIC 2012, Bali, 7 November 2012

Compositionality of NN Compounds: A Case Study on [N1+Artifactual-Type Event Nouns

This paper studies the adjectival modification to nouns in Mandarin Chinese based on selective binding. The main findings include: ⑴An adjective can select different types of head nouns as arguments and an adjective may modify an individual or an event. ⑵The qualia structure of a noun helps us better understand an adjective's selectional preference. Meanwhile, an adjective can modify multi-facet or one facet of the qualia role of a noun. ⑶ The adjacent adjective of a noun is not necessarily modifying the noun.

Shan Wang

Papers

Compound Event Nouns of the â€˜Modifier-headâ€™ Type in Mandarin Chinese

Type Construction of Event Nouns in Mandarin Chinese

Sense Representation in MARVS: A Case Study on the Polysemy of chī

Compositionality of NN Compounds: A Case Study on [N1+Artifactual-Type Event Nouns

Adjectival Modification to Nouns in Mandarin Chinese: Case Studies on ``chÃ¡ng+noun'' and ``adjective+tÃº shÅ« gu n''