Universality and Individuality: The Interaction of Noun Phrase Determiners in Corpular Clauses

This paper presents ',,n iml~lcmcntcd thct~ry fnr quanlifying noun phr:.i.,.;cs in clausc.s ctmt:mting ct)pulnr verbs (e.g.. "he" ~md "bcCOIllC'). Ih(~ccctling fr()nl Icccnt thcorcticnl work I)y Jackcn(Ioll[ I')X31. this c(,uputati(,tal theory recognizes the dependence ol" the quantification dccisit)n tm the dcl~nitcness, in(lclhfitcncss, or cla'~nncs.s hi" I)olh the subject and ()hjcct of c(apulnr verbs irt Fnglish. J~lckcndofl's intuition al')out Ihc qtmntil]c:~tional interdependence of suhject :tnd ohjcct Itz~s hccn imported fn,n his broader cognitive thc()ry and rel'ormulated ~,tltin a ct)nstraint propagation iizmtcwt)rk, I-'xtcnsit,ts reported here includt: the additi,m of mort: :,ctive determiners, the expansion of determiner categories, and the tre~ttmcnt of dispktccd objects. A further linding is th::t qu:Httilicational constraints may prop~g:~tc across soine clausM boundaries. The algorithm is used by the I~.EI.AI'US Natural I.:mguage Understanding System (h,ring a phase of analysis that posts constraints to produce zt 'constraint tree.' This phase comes ~fter crcz~lit)n of synt~tctic deep structure zntd bcfure ~cntcntktl rcl'Clcltcc ill a semantic-network ntodcl. Incorp(~,'ation ()f the qtmntific~tion algorithm in a larger system that parses ~cntcnccs z,nd builds semantic models from thcnt makes RE/.A'FUS ~hle to acquire taxonomic and identity inlormatit)n from text.