Preference Semantics

Abstract
Preference semantics (PS) is a set of formal procedures for representing the meaning structure of natural language, with a view to embodying that structure within a system that can be said to understand, rather than within the 'derivational paradigm', of transformational grammar (TG) and generative semantics (GS), which seeks to determine the well-formedness, or otherwise, of sentences. A system of preference semantics is outlined in which for each phase or clause of a complex sentence, the system builds up a network of lexical trees with the aid of structured items called templates and, at the next level, it structures those networks with higher level items called paraplates and common-sense inference rules. At each stage the system directs itself towards the correct network by always opting for the most 'semantically dense' one it can construct. It is suggested that this opting for the 'greatest semantic density' can be seen as an interpretation of Joos' 'Semantic Axiom Number 1'. It is argued that the analysis of quite simple examples requires the use of inductive rules of inference which cannot, theoretically cannot, be accommodated within the derivational paradigm.

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