Parsing parallel grammatical representations

Abstract

Traditional accounts of quantifier scope employ qualitative constraints or rules to account for scoping preferences. This paper outlines a feature-based parsing algorithm for a grammar with multiple simultaneous levels of representation, one of which corresponds to a partial ordering among quantifiers according to scope. The optimal such ordering (as well as the ranking of other orderings) is determined in this grammar not by absolute constraints, but by stochastic heuristics based on the degree of alignment among the representational levels. A Prolog implementation is described and its accuracy is compared with that of other accounts.