Computational Cognitive Morphosemantics: Modeling Morphological Compositionality in Hebrew Verbs with Embodied Construction Grammar

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper brings together the theoretical framework of construction grammar and studies of verbs in Modern Hebrew to furnish an analysis integrating the form and meaning components of morphological structure. In doing so, this work employs and extends Embodied Construction Grammar (ECG; Bergen and Chang 2005), a computational formalism developed to study grammar from a cognitive linguistic perspective. In developing a formal analysis of Hebrew verbs (section 3), I adapt ECG—until now a lexical/syntactic/semantic formalism—to account for the compositionality of morphological constructions, accommodating idiosyncrasy while encoding generalizations at multiple levels. Similar to syntactic constructions, morpheme constructions are related in an inheritance network, and can be productively composed to form words. With the expanded version of ECG, constructions can readily encode nonconcatenative root-and-pattern morphology and associated (compositional or noncompositional) semantics, cleanly integrated with syntactic constructions. This formal, cognitive study should pave the way for computational models of morphological learning and processing in Hebrew and other languages.

Research developments in multiple inheritance with exceptions

The inheritance problem can be simply stated: for any instantiation of an inheritance network, say a specific hierarchy Γ, find a conclusion set for Γ. In other words, find out what is logically entailed by Γ. This can be done in two ways: either by defining a deductive or proof theoretic definition to determine what paths are entailed by a network; or by translating the individual links in the network to a more general nonmonotonic logic and using its model and proof theory to generate entailments that correspond to what one would expect from “viewing” the inheritance hierarchy. Two approaches to a solution to the inheritance problem structure this paper. The first is widely known as the “path-based” or “proof theoretic”, and the second, the “Model-based” or “model theoretic”. The two approaches result in both a different interpretation of default links as well as a variation in the entailment strategy for a solution to teh inheritance problem. In either case, the entailments produced need some intuitive interpretation, which can be either credulous or skeptical. The semantics of both skeptical and credulous inheritance reasoners are examined.