According to the alternative semantics for focus, the semantic reflex of intonational focus is a second semantic value, which in the case of a sentence is a set of propositions. We examine a range of semantic and pragmatic applications of the theory, and extract a unitary principle specifying how the focus semantic value interacts with semantic and pragmatic processes. A strong version of the theory has the effect of making lexical or construction-specific stipulation of a focus-related effect in association-with-focus constructions impossible. Furthermore, while focus has a uniform import, the sources of meaning differences in association with focus are various.

We propose that ambiguous prepositional phrase attachment can be resolved on the basis of the relative strength of association of the preposition with noun and verb, estimated on the basis of word distribution in a large corpus. This work suggests that a distributional approach can be effective in resolving parsing problems that apparently call for complex reasoning.

We present a technique for automatic induction of slot annotations for subcategorization frames, based on induction of hidden classes in the EM framework of statistical estimation. The models are empirically evalutated by a general decision test. Induction of slot labeling for subcategorization frames is accomplished by a further application of EM, and applied experimentally on frame observations derived from parsing large corpora. We outline an interpretation of the learned representations as theoretical-linguistic decompositional lexical entries.

We propose that ambiguous prepositional phrase attachment can be resolved on the basis of the relative strength of association of the preposition with noun and verb, estimated on the basis of word distribution in a large corpus. This work suggests that a distributional approach can be effective in resolving parsing problems that apparently call for complex reasoning.

It is well-known that in English and in many other languages, virtually every major category can be conjoined with and and or. The question we address here is whether we can give a single meaning for and and a single meaning for or that covers their uses across the full range of categories.In order to make the question more precise and forestall a quick negative answer, we need to distinguish the central use of and from a number of special uses. Informally characterized, what we mean by the central use of and with conjuncts of any category is related to the sentential conjunction and with the meaning of ordinary logical conjunction (although because of interaction with other logical elements in the sentence, there may not always exist a natural paraphrase in terms of conjoined English sentences.) Examples of the central use of and with various categories are given in (1); some special uses which we will not treat are given in (2). (There do not appear to be any special uses of or which need to be excluded; if there are, we are not treating them.) (1) (a) John and Mary are in Chicago. (b) Bacon and eggs are (both) high in cholesterol. (c) Susan will retire and buy a farm. (d) She was wearing a new and expensive dress. (2) (a) John and Mary are a happy couple. 1 (b) Bacon and eggs is my favorite breakfast. (c) Susan will try and sell her house. (d) She was wearing a blue and white dress.We assume a framework in which all kinds of conjoined constituents are directly generated syntactically, not derived via conjunction-reduction from conjoined sentences. In order to be able to say that it is nevertheless the same and and the same or that appear in all the constituent conjunction rules, we want to be able to give a single meaning for (normal) and, and a single meaning for or.We begin by reviewing the type theory of Montague (1973) (PTQ), and his treatment of phrasal conjunction. Then in section III we present a generalized ' We will have something to say about the "group-reading" and with noun phrases in Appendix B.