Seeing the language

a diagrammatic approach to natural discourse

Aránzazu San Ginés

pp. 411-439

in: John Mumma, Marco Panza, Paul-Gabriel Sandu (eds), Diagrams in mathematics, Synthese 186 (1), 2012.

Abstract

The key idea behind the diagrammatic approach presented in the paper is that the sophisticated mechanisms of human visual construction also play an important role in natural languages. We propose a diagrammatic representation of English, giving examples, translation rules, and semantics. Special attention will be paid to anaphoric phenomena, in particular, the possibility of a uniform treatment of anaphoric pronouns.