Issues in Relating Syntax Semantics

The design of a natural language understanding system is dependent on a rich and structured knowledge representation. Much recent work in computational and cognitive linguistics has focused on representations for syntactic and morphological knowledge. Similarly, the knowledge representation paradigm has proposed many conceptual tools for the representation of semantic knowledge. Combining the two in one system, a system for representing linguistic knowledge, is the essential next task for computational linguistics. This paper will explore some issues which arise in the foundational design of such a representational system. In using the fundamental building block of the grammatical construction (Fillmore 1987), I will reanalyze traditional problems like the passive construction and dative "movement", showing how a "construction" solution avoids common problems in moi'e traditional grammatical theories. In addition, I will suggest how use of an inheritance hierarchy can replace other linguistic tools for abstraction like lexieal rules, while others can be captured by appealing to shared semantic structures. I will also touch on the issues of lexicalization in theories of grammar whether information is redundantly specified in the lexicon.