Abstract
(1) Musa løp under bordet.
'The mouse ran under the table.'
(2) Under bordet er et fint sted å gjemme seg.
'Under the table is a good place to hide.'
Locative prepositional phrases, as seen in (1) and (2) ('under
bordet'), all express spatial concepts, but they can be interpreted in a
number of different ways. In (1), the mouse may (i) be running around
under the table, (ii) run to the region under the table (e.g. to
hide), or (iii) run through the region under the table (e.g. 'Musa løp
under bordet og ut på den andre siden'). These three different
readings all modify the event or situation of the mouse's running, but
differ in the way they modify it. In (2), however, the prepositional
phrase seems to refer to a region of space rather than modifying an
event.
I describe a theory on how to interpret locative prepositional
phrases, which tries to account for both the modificational and the
referential proeprties of preositional phrases, nameley the theory
presented by Marcus Kracht in 'On the Semantics of Locatives'
(Linguistics and Philosophy, 25:157-232, 2002).
Furthermore, I implement the main features of this theory in a
computational framework, the 'Linguistic Knowledge Builder' system
(LKB), using 'Head-driven Phrase-Structure Grammar' (HPSG) as the
theory for syntactic representation and 'Minimal Recursion Semantics'
(MRS) as the theory for semantic representation.
I develop a model (grammar fragment) for Norwegian locatives, and
explore how this model describes Norwegian locatives with respect to
their syntactic behaviour and semantics properties. I argue that the
theory of Kracht (2002) predict how prepositional phrases with
different syntactic structures express the same type of semantics
(meaning).
I also apply the theory of Kracht (2002) in a contrastive analysis of locative prepositional phrases in Norwegian and English, and argue that we can use this model for more accurate translations in a semantic transfer-based Machine Translation system.