A Process Algebraic Approach to Computational Linguistics

Abstract

The thesis presents a way to apply process algebra to computational linguistics. We are interested in how contexts can affect or contribute to language understanding and model the phenomena as a system of communicating processes to study the interaction between them in detail. For this purpose, we turn to the pie-calculus and investigate how communicating processes may be defined. While investigating the computational grounds of communication and concurrency,we devise a graphical representation for processes to capture the structure of interaction between them. Then, we develop a logic, combinatory intuitionistic linear logic with equality relation, to specify communicating processes logically. The development enables us to study Situation Semantics with process algebra. We construct semantic objects employed in Situation Semantics in the pi-calculus and then represent them in the logic. Through the construction,we also relate Situation Semantics with the research on the information flow, Channel Theory, by conceiving of linear logic as a theory of the information flow. To show how sentences can be parsed as the result of interactions between processes, we present a concurrent chart parser encoded in the pi-calculus. We also explain how a semantic representation can be generated as a process by the parser. We conclude the thesis by comparing the framework with other approaches.