What a Rational Interpreter Would Do: Building, Ranking, and Updating Quantifer Scope Representations in Discourse

Abstract

We frame the general problem of rationally (in the sense of Anderson et al's ACT-R framework) integrating semantic theories and processing, and indicate how this integrated theory could be explicitly formalized; an explicit formalization enables us to empirically evaluate semantic and processing theories both qualitatively and quantitatively. We then introduce the problem of quantifier scope, the processing di culty of inverse scope, and two types of theories of scope, and discuss the results of a self-paced reading experiment and its consequences for these two types of theories. Finally, we outline how probabilities for LF construction rules could be computed based on the experimental results.