Parsing and Interpretation in the Minimalist Paradigm

In this paper, we discuss how recent theoretical linguistic research focusing on the Minimalist Program (MP) (Cho95, Mar95, Zwa94) can be used to guide the parsing of a useful range of natural language sentences and the building of a logical representation in a principles‐based manner. We discuss the components of the MP and give an example derivation. We then propose parsing algorithms that recreate the derivation structure starting with a lexicon and the surface form of a sentence. Given the approximated derivation structure, MP principles are applied to generate a logical form, which leads to linguistically based algorithms for determining possible meanings for sentences that are ambiguous due to quantifier scope.

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