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Linguistics
Theory
Husserl's approach to meanings is quite close
to treatment of language in systemic-functional
linguistics (SFL), as developed by Firth and
Halliday. The relation is both genetic
(Husserl’s philosophy of language was advocated
by Jakobson whose ideas are actively used in SFL)
and conceptual (Husserl’s constitutive
phenomenology and SFL are aimed at investigation
of meaning constitution mechanisms). For these
studies, SFL provides the notion of “system”
as a formal descriptive tool relating
paradigmatic aspects of classification of
functions and their syntagmatic realizations.
Constitution of meanings is modeled as a
configuration (syndrome) of features selected by
systems, while their realization statements
provide its symptoms. In this model, utterances
bind communicative needs and classification
possibilities provided by the semiotic system of
language to realize them in a concatenated
sequence of constituents. The extension over
Halliday's model includes an integrated treatment
of grammar and lexicon: the latter is treated as
a system of choices for semiotic delivery of
notions from the Conceptual Model (the stratum
above the linguistic system).
Applied research
The theoretical stance finds its applications
in the multilingual generation technology, which
starts from a semantic representation common to
several languages and produces multilingual texts
corresponding to the semantic representation.
This is the basis for AGILE, the project on
multilingual generation, funded by the European
Commission. The generation is based on
contrastive grammar models in terms of
systemic-functional linguistics. The Russian
grammar in the framework of the KPML development
environment is available from http://www.sharoff.nm.ru/Russian.zip.
Another direction of my application-oriented
research in linguistics is devoted to
multilingual access to information stored in
databases.
My on-line papers on the topic
Comments/suggestions about their content are
welcome.
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| Meaning and context in a
Husserl-inspired model |
A draft submitted to the special issue
“Context in context” (http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce/cinc/):
- The paper draws an opposition between two
paradigms in treatment of lexical
meanings. The first paradigm models
lexical meanings by means of definitions
of categories of some sort. According to
the second paradigm, lexical meanings are
treated as resources for communication.
The paper advocates the second paradigm
and investigates the relationship between
lexical items and context they are used
in. A meaning description mechanism
proposed in this paper relates
meaning-endowing acts (in the tradition
of Husserl and Jakobson) and the
systemic-functional linguistics
(Halliday). This mechanism is discussed
in application to tasks of multilingual
generation, in which the lexicogrammar
serves as an intermediate layer for
realization of concepts of the domain
model in utterances of different natural
languages.
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| The
semiotics of "Choose Multiline from the Draw
toolbar" |
A paper presented at and published in the
Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on
Terminology and Knowledge Engineering, Innsbruck
(Austria), 24-28 August 1999, pp. 594-602:
- The paper advocates three theses: (a) the
nature of terms is founded in the nature
of language as the intersubjective medium
for transmission of the social stock of
knowledge; (b) relations between notions
of a problem domain and their expression
in text depend not only on the
propositional (ideational) content of
words, but also on the interpersonal and
textual functions of language; (c) these
methodological considerations are helpful
for applications in computational
linguistics, in particular, in AGILE, our
project for multilingual generation of
software manuals.
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| Lexis: between Grammar
and Domain Model |
A paper presented at and published in the
Proceedings of the 26th Forum of Linguistic
Association of Canada and the United States
(LACUS), Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 2-7 August,
1999:
- This paper has two purposes. The first
one is practical: it explores the lexical
resources that are necessary for the task
of multilingual generation (MLG). A
source for generation is a formal model
of some domain, such as a device, system
or state of the world, from which
descriptions of this domain in several
target languages are generated. The
research presented in the paper is mostly
based on generation of descriptions for
software manuals and online helps. The
linguistic theory which is used in the
research is SFL. This leads us to the
theoretical stance of this paper: a quest
for the proper treatment of lexical
meanings in SFL.
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| Multilingual
grammars and Multilingual Lexicons for
Multilingual Text Generation |
A paper presented at and published in the
Proceedings of the ECAI'98 Workshop on
Multilinguality in the Lexicon, Brighton, U.K.,
August 1998, p. 1-8:
- In this paper we discuss some practical
steps that support the integration of
multilingual grammars designed for text
generation and multilingual lexicons that
describe the lexical stocks of a variety
of natural languages. We suggest that
grammatical resources for natural
language generation and lexical resources
for lexical representations are not
necessarily commensurate currently in
their design and aims, although both
contain information necessary for natural
language generation. We therefore discuss
methods by which heterogenous generation
systems can be constructed in which
large-scale lexical and grammatical
components can be maintained separately
but allowed to interact as is necessary
for generation.
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- Look at the Map of the
site for the relationship between my
interests. My CV
with the complete list of publications is
also available.
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