Steven Abney
Biographic Data
| ID | 5858623 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven Abney |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Abney |
| SIGNATURE | ABNEY S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7467-6690 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Plural Intensional Presuppositional predicate calculus (PIP)
One successful branch of natural language semantics uses first order predicate calculus and set theory, well-studied systems of mathematics in their own right, as meta-languages for natural-language meanings. Now this traditional approach suffers from certain well-known deficiencies in treating what we call improper scope anaphora, such as cross-sentential anaphora to indefinites, donkey pronouns (Geach 1962), and quantificational (Karttunen 1969…
Intensional anaphora
Intensional operators are often treated as quantifiers over possible worlds, parallel to the treatment of determiners as quantifiers over individuals. Individuals introduced in intensional contexts cannot serve as antecedents to later pronouns as easily as those introduced in (merely) quantificational contexts, though. For instance, a quantified sentence like Everyone is eating a cheeseburger may be felicitously followed by an anaphoric statement…
Inductive general grammar
General-linguistic datasets that have become available in recent years promise to enable new progress toward a theory of general grammar. A barrier to success is the incompatibility between the inductive, externalist approach that is natural for exploiting the datasets and the deductive, mentalist philosophy that is currently dominant within linguistics. I argue that the externalist philosophy is viable and that there are reasons to consider it p…
Understanding the Yarowsky Algorithm
Many problems in computational linguistics are well suited for bootstrapping (semisupervised learning) techniques. The Yarowsky algorithm is a well-known bootstrapping algorithm, but it is not mathematically well understood. This article analyzes it as optimizing an objective function. More specifically, a number of variants of the Yarowsky algorithm (though not the original algorithm itself) are shown to optimize either likelihood or a closely r…
Memory requirements and local ambiguities of parsing strategies
A computational model of human parsing
A computational model of human parsing
Memory requirements and local ambiguities of parsing strategies
Understanding the Yarowsky Algorithm
Many problems in computational linguistics are well suited for bootstrapping (semisupervised learning) techniques. The Yarowsky algorithm is a well-known bootstrapping algorithm, but it is not mathematically well understood. This article analyzes it as optimizing an objective function. More specifically, a number of variants of the Yarowsky algorithm (though not the original algorithm itself) are shown to optimize either likelihood or a closely r…
Inductive general grammar
General-linguistic datasets that have become available in recent years promise to enable new progress toward a theory of general grammar. A barrier to success is the incompatibility between the inductive, externalist approach that is natural for exploiting the datasets and the deductive, mentalist philosophy that is currently dominant within linguistics. I argue that the externalist philosophy is viable and that there are reasons to consider it p…
Intensional anaphora
Intensional operators are often treated as quantifiers over possible worlds, parallel to the treatment of determiners as quantifiers over individuals. Individuals introduced in intensional contexts cannot serve as antecedents to later pronouns as easily as those introduced in (merely) quantificational contexts, though. For instance, a quantified sentence like Everyone is eating a cheeseburger may be felicitously followed by an anaphoric statement…
Plural Intensional Presuppositional predicate calculus (PIP)
One successful branch of natural language semantics uses first order predicate calculus and set theory, well-studied systems of mathematics in their own right, as meta-languages for natural-language meanings. Now this traditional approach suffers from certain well-known deficiencies in treating what we call improper scope anaphora, such as cross-sentential anaphora to indefinites, donkey pronouns (Geach 1962), and quantificational (Karttunen 1969…
Computer Science (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (4 works) · Natural language processing (3 works) · Artificial Intelligence (2 works) · Linguistics (2 works) · Mathematics (2 works) · Parsing (2 works) · Philosophy (2 works) · Psycholinguistics (2 works)