Construct: in search of a theory of meaning

CONSTRUCT is a question-answering system for elementary mathematical language using natural language input. The primary goal of the system is to reach a better understandJng of the relationship between the syntactic and semantic components of natural language. The meaning conditions for sentences are given in terms of i:OI'lstructive set theory. The notion of a semantic transformation is introduced, and it is suggested how to analyze this notion in terms of program schemata. $ Athowledgements. We would like to express our gratitude to Patrick Suppes. who defined our goals, criticized our ideas 'and implementation, and made available to us the computer facilities of the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences (IMSSS) at Stanford. , ' The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of the United, States Government or the International Business Machines Corporation. Support for this work was obtained from the National Science Foundation under Grant EC 143X4. This work was done while ,all three authors were at IMSSS.