[Ligncse256] Reference?

[Ben Cipollini]

Hey Roger,

Thanks for the thoughts.  By the way, sorry if I came off overly ... 
aggressive.  I tend to not write unless I'm empassioned about something at 
the moment...

Anyway, I had a bunch of thoughts written up from Saturday or Sunday, but 
I'm ditching them.  I appreciate the thoughts and examples you sent.  I 
think the approach to reference depends on what application is being 
written.  If we're talking about NLP or any generic language processor... I 
can see it.

If we're talking about a cognitive model of language, I think that the whole 
idea of reference breaks down.  So in that case, what I was calling 
"reference" would actually extend to any word, phrase, sentence, etc. 
Addressing your points in terms of a cognitive model is just talking around 
things and missing the point of reference in general, I think.

So, I will leave it at that, unless what I'm saying now also seems 
problematic.  I could describe how I think these issues can be described in 
a cognitive model of meaning, but I don't think that's going really get at 
much.

Thanks!
Ben

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Levy" <rlevy at ucsd.edu>
To: "Ben Cipollini" <bcipolli at cogsci.ucsd.edu>
Cc: <ligncse256 at ling.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Ligncse256] Reference?


> Ben Cipollini wrote:
>> Hey all,
>>  As it turns out, it's actually theories in reference in the philosophy
>> of language (e.g. Kripke & others) that pissed me off enough to get me
>> interested in cognitive science.  It's been over 12 years since I wrote a
>> paper about how "Everest" does not refer to "Gaurisanker" (damn it!)
>> Anyway, point being: issues in reference really ... BUG ME haha
>>  In class, Roger mentioned that some noun phrases do not refer ("every
>> dancer"; "no dancer").  I stayed silent in the lecture (I did!) , hoping
>> that by the end that this view, while not "theoretically" desirable for
>> me, might be computationally desirable.  This email is my argument that
>> it's neither theoretically desirable nor computationally desirable.
>>  Theoretically:
>> To say that "every dancer" does not refer is to say that any noun in a
>> work of fiction does not refer.  Well, that's crazy, I say!  You may even
>> want to push further, to say that words with uncertain reference don't
>> refer.  But language is a type of noisy-channel communication; there is
>> no certainty in any communcation.  Where do you stop?  Instead of trying
>> to answer the question, maybe take a cognitive perspective.
>>  Jeff Elman has suggested that meaning is a "walk in a state-space" or
>> something along the lines.  In other words, meaning is a path in a
>> computational space.  Why not understand reference as refering to
>> cognitive states, or paths in a computational space?  That would allow
>> all nouns to refer, including categories ("dogs"), quantified categories
>> ("every/some/no dancer"), fictional places & names, historical figures,
>> etc. Computationally:
>> Well, that's fine, but as with everything computatational, I'm always
>> willing to sell my theoretical soul to the computataionl devil if I can
>> gain in performance or tractibility!  But ... as far as I could tell,
>> making the division between referring and non-referring nouns actually
>> added a layer of complexity into models.  We have to classify based on
>> referring / non-referring noun class first, then go on to determine
>> reference and reference dependence relations.
>>  Why make the distinction?  Every dancer touched her toes; why not let
>> "her" refer to "every dancer"?  What problem does that cause?  Even if
>> you don't accept what I said above about the theoretical "goodness" (are
>> you crazy??), how would this help us computationally?
>>  Seriously though, I'm happy to hear answers.  If you're not interested
>> in a .... "thoughtfully aggressive" reply .... you may want to let me
>> know when you answer :D
>
> Hi Ben,
>
> These are very interesting and important issues you're raising!
>
> First, I would personally argue that whether linguistic reference directly
> implicates cognitive states may to a considerable extent be orthogonal to
> the question of what the mathematical structure of referential meaning is
> like.  (These could be questions at different levels of analysis.)  To me,
> the claim that meaning is a "walk in a state-space" is crucially a claim
> about the nature of incremental interpretation (one that I agree with:
> every extra bit of the linguistic input you process changes your beliefs
> about what the utterance is likely to mean), and leaves quite wide open
> the question of what the structure of the state-space is.
>
> Second, let me try to lay out some of the problems that quickly arise if
> you try to make quantified NPs referential.  For an NP to be referential,
> it should be able to be mapped to an individual or group of individuals in
> the (comprehender's cognitive) "world", such that the truth conditions of
> "NP is Y" are that every member of the group mapped to by NP is in the set
> mapped to by Y.  Now for the case of "every dancer", it might seem that
> you can get away with mapping the NP to the group of all dancers.
>
> There are two immediate problems that arise here.  First, this doesn't
> work for "No N" NPs.  For example:
>
>   (1) No woman has walked on Mars.
>
> There is no way of choosing a group of individuals G in the world for "No
> woman" to map to such that (1) means that G has walked on Mars. [You can't
> choose, for example, the group of individuals who are not women.]
>
> Second, if "Every N" maps to the complete group of Ns, then sentence
> negation becomes problematic:
>
>   (2) Every dancer did not twist her knee.
>
> This sentence has two scopings, one of which would be consistent with a
> mapping of "Every dancer" to the group of all dancers (i.e., the scoping
> where no dancer twisted her knee).  But the other scoping, in which at
> least one dancer didn't twist her knee, cannot be obtained by having
> "Every dancer" map to a fixed group of individuals.  (If you don't like
> example (1), think of "all that glitters is not gold".)
>
> These difficulties arise in both theoretical and computational/practical
> contexts.
>
> Now, I *do* agree with you that this adds an extra layer of complexity
> into coreference-resolution systems.  But I actually think the real case
> is that coreference systems tend to drastically oversimplify the problem.
>
> FWIW.
>
> Roger
>
> -- 
>
> Roger Levy                      Email: rlevy at ucsd.edu
> Assistant Professor             Phone: 858-534-7219
> Department of Linguistics       Fax:   858-534-4789
> UC San Diego                    Web:   http://ling.ucsd.edu/~rlevy