[Attempto] APE bug?

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 20 Jun 2011, at 12:57, Kaarel Kaljurand wrote:

> * Consider these two snippets:
> 
> (1) There is a man. A group is the man and a dog of the man.
> (2) There is a man. A group is a dog of the man and the man.
> 
> Snippet (1) is parsed correctly. Snippet (2) gives (correctly?) the
> error message "Noun phrase conjunction refers anaphorically to
> itself." The confusing thing here is that sentences (1) and (2) are
> not semantically equivalent (as one would expect, for these sentences
> at least): in (2) 'and' binds stronger. I don't know if it's possible
> to come up with a better interpretation rule in this case but in any
> case we should describe the interaction of 'and' and 'of' in the
> interpretation rules doc.

Logically there is a symmetry between the constituents of a conjunction, i.e. "A and B" = "B and A". But this does not apply to anaphoric references between A and B that are directional. Thus in ACE the sentences 

(A) A man and the man wait.
(B) The man and a man wait.

are not identical.

Sentence A produces the error message "Noun phrase conjunction refers anaphorically to itself." since "the man" refers anaphorically to "a man" meaning that there is only one man and the conjunction does not make much sense. This is what APE checks.

Sentence B produces the warning "The definite noun phrase 'the man' does not have an antecedent and thus is not interpreted as anaphoric reference, but as a new indefinite noun phrase.". This sentence is correct though, since it introduces two different men and the conjunction makes sense.

The situation, of course, gets more complicated since in English one uses often the definite determiner "the" without intending any anaphoric reference. ACE has to fit this English pragmatics into the schema "process as anaphoric reference to an antecedent or treat as indefinite determiner since there is no antecedent". See Kaarel's next example

> (3) "Fido" is the name of the dog of a man and a woman.
> 
> Sentence (3) gives the above error message but I think it should not.

where English pragmatics requires "the name". English pragmatics, however, does not require "the dog". Replacing (3) by

(3') "Fido" is the name of a dog of a man and a woman.

the error message disappears. 

As Kaarel correctly pointed out sentence (3) should not create an error message. Probably the filter that I apply in APE is too strict. I'll have to look into this when I will be back in Zurich. Here in Sicily it is just too hot to do serious work.

Regards.

   --- nef