An Account of English YES/NO Interrogative Sentences within ARTEMIS

Abstract

As stated in Periñán-Pascual and Arcas Túnez (2010, p. 2671) FunGramKB´s lexical and grammatical levels are grounded in sound linguistic theories, allowing the system to capture syntactic-semantic generalizations which are able to provide both explanations and predictions of language phenomena. The linguistic foundation of FunGramKB is inspired on Role and Reference Grammar (RRG, Van Valin, 2005) and the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM, Ruíz de Mendoza & Mairal Usón, 2008; Mairal Usón & Ruíz de Mendoza, 2008). The close interrelation between these grammatical theories and FungramKB is patent in the design of ARTEMIS (Automatically Representing Text Meaning via an Interlingua-Based System”), an NLP system whose objective is the simulation of natural language understanding. In doing so, ARTEMIS becomes a development of the syntax-to-semantics linking algorithm proposed in RRG which involves a parsing process that starts with a natural language sentence, extracts its morphosyntactic features and provides a representation of these in terms of the so-called layered structure of the clause (LSC) in RRG. Because of its centrality, there is a vital need for a full development of ARTEMIS. This paper aims at contributing to this elaboration by proposing the set of rules and operations necessary for the treatment of Yes/No interrogative sentences within such an NLP system.