On Underspecification

Author: Pinkal, Manfred

Editor:

Underspecification has become fashionable in computational semantics. In this chapter, I will try to give an idea of what semantic underspecification is, what it has been good for, and what the perspective for future application are. I will start with the inspection of specific phenomena and techniques which are usually associated with the notion of underspecification (in Section 1 and 2, respectively). In Sect. 3, I will try to indicate the main motivations for using underspecification techniques. Then, I will point out one important use of the concept in some detail, i.e., direct reasoning with incomplete semantic information, discussing first the appropriate truth-conditional basis (Sect. 4), and second perspectives on efficient reasonig systems (Sect. 5). I will conclude with some remarks about the general status of the semantic underspecification concept, in Sect. 6.