Achieving expressive completeness and computational efficiency for underspecified scope represnations

Abstract

The tension between expressive power and computational tractability poses an acute problem for theories of underspecified semantic representation. In previous work we have presented an account of underspecified scope representations within Property Theory with Curry Typing (PTCT), an intensional first-order theory for natural language semantics. Here we show how filters applied to the underspecified-scope terms of PTCT permit both expressive completeness and the reduction of computational complexity in a significant class of non-worst case scenarios.