Igor Mel’čuk
 

 (University of Montreal)

Title: Formal Models of Natural Language

Igor Mel'cuk was born in Odessa (former USSR, now Ukraine). Ph.D. from the Institute of Linguistics, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow (Theoretical Problems of Automatic Syntactic Analysis of Texts). Junior, then Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Linguistics, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow. Since 1977 full professor, Département de linguistique et de traduction, Université de Montréal. Regular research work under grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Quebec Government (eight major grants covering years 1979 through 1995) and smaller grants from the Université de Montréal. Various undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars at different universities and computing centres in the USSR and in the University of California at Los Angeles, Boston University, the University of Delaware at Newark, the University of Melbourne, the University of Canberra, the University of Vienna, the University of Munich, the University of La Coruña, the Russian State University of the Humanities (Moscow), Université de Franche-Comté (Besançon), Université Paris-13 (Villetaneuse), Collège de France, Chaire internationale Blaise-Pascal (École Normale Supérieure, France), University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Main research in General linguistic theory; semantics, syntax, and morphology, and Metalinguistics (linguistic concepts and terminology). I. Mel'cuk has published 38 books, 222 papers. He is Doctor Honoris causa University of Besançon, France, 1977, Member of the Royal Society of Canada, 1994, Professor at the Collège de France (International Chair) 1996-1997, Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1999, Professor of the International Chair Blaise Pascal, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 2002-2004. He received 1988-1989: Killam Scholarship (Canada), 1989-1990: Guggenheim Fellowship (USA), 1991: Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (Germany), 1997: Award of the French Canadian Association for Advancement of Sciences. He has been at the very beginning of machine translation.
 

Abstract

1. Formal modeling has been for a long time one of the most powerful research tools in science. The time is ripe to develop this technique in the description of natural languages.
2. The Meaning-Text Theory puts forth the Meaning-Text formal model [= MTM] of language—a system of rules that “mimic” the behavior of speakers. More precisely, an MTM specifies the transition from an infinite, but countable set of meanings of language
L to an infinite, but countable set of texts of L.
3. An MTM is based on several multilayer formal representations of utterances at four major levels: semantic, syntactic, morphological, and phonological.
4. An MTM uses dependencies as the main formalism for the description of uttterance structures and leans heavily on a rich semantics-oriented dictionary of a new type: Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary.