It is generally believed that question answering can benefit from natural language processing methods. So far, however, there have been few systematic studies of this conjecture. We report on ongoing work that is aimed at understanding the contribution of linguistically informed modules and resources to the overall performance of a generic question answering system. Specifically, we describe th...

The goal of this paper is to examine the use of definite articleswith proper names, both cross-linguistically and intra-linguistically and provide a morpho-syntactic analysis of it. The first question to consider is whether article absence or article presence is the default case. The second question is when and how the alternative arises. I will presuppose here that names in argument positions ...

Within relevance theory the two local pragmatic processes of enrichment and loosening of linguistically encoded conceptual material have been given quite distinct treatments. Enrichments of various sorts, including those which involve a logical strengthening of a lexical concept, contribute to the proposition expressed by the utterance, hence to its truthconditions. Loosenings, including metaph...

Cross-linguistically, there are three grammatical devices to process the question mark j+Whi: the reduplication of certain elements in the predicate, Subject-Auxiliary Inversion, and the use of question particles. Also cross-linguistically, there are two devices for grammar to process the focus mark (+Focus]: the fronting of focused constituents and the insertion of a . Focus Marker such as the...