An essay on grammar-parser relations By Jan van de Koot (review)

BOOK NOTICES 239 recaps and further extends Katz's semantic theory , which is based on configuration rules specifying semantic structures and projection operations combining lexical representations. She then goes on to develop analyses ofselected verbs, e.g. break, swallow, put, read, taste, stay, move, lose, receive, fill, load, cut, and watch. This is aimed at showing the advantages of Decompositional Theory, and in the course of her discussion R treats a number of theoretical issues, including indeterminate vs. explicit concepts, placedness and ambiguity of semantic representations, and the reconstruction of the notions Agent, Theme, and Instrument in her theory. It is clear from R's book that the question 'What is meaning?' cannot be answered in terms of thematic roles. At best, the theoretical status of thematic roles turns out to be like that of abstract Case or agr. Just as abstract Case and agr are cover terms for syntactic features with often idiosyncratic morphological realization, thematic roles seem most useful simply as syntactic designations for positions that enter into argument and adjunct relations. This is a good book, not just for its critique of theta theory, but also for the positive contribution of further development of the Decompositional Theory. Although the book is a revised dissertation, it doesn't read like one: the style is engaging and philosophical, and the exemplification is detailed and clear. And while it does not cover every thematic-role-based proposal ever made, the book is nevertheless to be recommended to anyone who has puzzled over the content of thematic roles. [Edwin Battistella, University of Alabama in Birmingham ] Psychology of language: An introduction to sentence and discourse processes . By Murray Singer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990. Pages xi, 308. $24.95. Recent years have seen the emergence of an essentially interdisciplinary, cognitive-science approach to natural language processing, with some of the most fruitful work focusing on discourse structure and processing. Singer's book is intended as an introductory graduate textbook , though it is also suitable as a desk reference for the linguist, cognitive psychologist, or computer scientist with an interest in natural language processing. An introductory graduate textbook must accomplish several purposes: (i) familiarize students with key theoretical concepts; (ii) refer them to the fundamental literature in which those concepts are discussed; (iii) provide them with exemplars that teach them how to apply the concepts insightfully to the data; and (iv) inculcate a sense of relevance that enables students to read professional articles and evaluate their theoretical significance. S's book is probably above average by these standards. Key concepts are clearly ifsuccinctly explained, fundamental articles are cited in each of the relevant disciplines, and examples are frequent and detailed enough to satisfy the most exacting linguist . The book's weaknesses are those endemic to any introductory text: it emphasizes consensus , spending more time summarizing established results than exploring open issues and controversies, and the passages which explain key concepts are often terse, so that the instructor may sometimes wish to assign source articles as background reading. Overall, the book appears to be a valuable introductory textbook for a course in psycholinguistics or discourse processing. It is divided into ten chapters, as follows: Ch. 1, 'Introduction '; Ch. 2, 'Language and meaning: Representing and remembering discourse'; Ch. 3, 'Syntax and parsing processes'; Ch. 4, The role of knowledge in language comprehension'; Ch. 5, 'Understanding coherent discourse'; Ch. 6, Theme'; Ch. 7, 'Inference processes'; Ch. 8, 'Understanding stories'; Ch. 9, 'Question answering and sentence verification'; and Ch. 10, 'Natural language understanding by computers —and people'. One ofthe noteworthy aspects of the book is its thorough integration of psycholinguistic data with the concepts of discourse analysis, including coherence, the givennew contract, thematic structure, and scripts. [Paul Deane, University of Central Florida.] An essay on grammar-parser relations. By Jan van de Koot. Dordrecht: Foris, 1990. Pp. xii, 152. Paper $24.50. In this monograph, K investigates the possible relations between grammars and parsers. Any theory of the mind that postulates separate 240 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 1 (1992) levels of representations raises the question of what relations are possible, justified and beneficial among the several levels. Two such theories are Marr's theory of vision and...