Semantics and the Syntactic Classification of Words

摘要

Traditional grammars classify words according to generic syntactic functions or morphological characteristics. For teaching humans and for descriptive linguistics this seemed sufficient. The advent of computers has changed the situation. Since machines are devoid of experiential knowledge, they need a more explicit grammar to handle natural language. Correlational grammar is an attempt in that direction. The paper describes parts of correlational syntax and shown how a highly differentiated syntax can be used to establish word classes for which an intensional semantic definition can then be found. It exemplifies this approach in two areas of grammar; predicative adjectives and transitive verbs. The classification serves to eliminate ambiguity and spurious computer interpretations of natural language sentences. (Author)