We propose a semantics for locative expressions such as near Jones or west of Denver, an important subsystem for NLP applications. Locative expressions denote regions of space, and serve as arguments to predicates, locating objects and events spatially. Since simple locatives occupy argument positions, they do NOT participate in scope ambiguities---pace one common view, which sees locatives as logical operators. Our proposal justifies common representational practice in computational linguistics, accounting for how locative expressions function anaphorically, and explaining a wide range of inference involving locatives. We further demonstrate how the argument analysis may accommodate multiple locative arguments in a single predicate. The analysis is implemented for use in a database query application.

In the new Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) language processing system that is currently under development at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, the Montagovian semantics of the earlier GPSG system (see [Gawron et al. 1982]) is replaced by a radically different approach with a number of distinct advantages. In place of the lambda calculus and standard first-order logic, our medium of conceptual representation is a new logical formalism called NFLT (Neo-Fregean Language of Thought); compositional semantics is effected, not by schematic lambda expressions, but by LISP procedures that operate on NFLT expressions to produce new expressions. NFLT has a number of features that make it well-suited for natural language translations, including predicates of variable arity in which explicitly marked situational roles supercede order-coded argument positions, sortally restricted quantification, a compositional (but nonextensional) semantics that handles causal contexts, and a principled conceptual raising mechanism that we expect to lead to a computationally tractable account of propositional attitudes. The use of semantically compositional LISP procedures in place of lambda-schemas allows us to produce fully reduced translations on the fly, with no need for post-processing. This approach should simplify the task of using semantic information (such as sortal incompatibilities) to eliminate bad parse paths.